My transition to a high school teacher starts tomorrow. As I mentioned in my other weblog, I taught at junior high for eight years and now I am teaching in the high school.
I was not expecting this transfer because I did not ask for it; it basically fell in my lap. I contentedly taught at the junior high those eight years and in that time I had been the yearbook advisor for the last five years and the department chair for the last two years. I worked on school improvement colaborations, crunched data, and researched how to do things better with that staff of 35. In this new high school position, I know maybe five other teachers out of 130.
Also adding to my chagrin about this transfer is that I will teach my five classes in four different classrooms, wheeling my "desk" around on a cart. My permenant desk is more like a counter in the teacher work room and I doubt I will be able to get much done there as my back would be to the room. I think I'll utilize the library.
A few good points are that I have 48 minutes to eat lunch instead of the 25 I had in the junior high. I will have a 48 minute prep/conference period as well as a 48 minute duty period whereas at the junior high I had one 55 minute prep/conference period. I will hopefully be able to get more done while at school. The last good thing is that school ends at 2:20pm which is pretty early. (But that is of course off-set by school starting at 7:20am which is also pretty darn early.)
I'll be updating here as I go through this transition.
Extremely long but very useful and informative article. How i wish i can do all of that in a short period of time. But for sure doing those will produce results. I will try to spread your words through my blog and link it back to you. Thanks a lot for those tips.
Posted by: thesis writing | Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 07:31 AM