Realization
It occurred to me the other day what part of my trouble has been in transitioning is on this island. It's the job in general. I really enjoy kids, which is something I never thought I would say, and I like teaching, though I find it to be excruciatingly difficult sometimes.
Lesson planning is wicked hard for me. Even if I immediately know what I want them to learn, it seems a gigantic onion that needs to be peeled and I have trouble finding the starting point, let alone the points of progression. I feel like everyone else is so much more able, and that drives me crazy.
While that is a sticking point it has little to do with the transition. The difficulty is ultimately that I am teaching 10 or 11 different grades, (K, 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, and 11) with the 10th and 11th grades being 2 different levels within each grade so it's more like 10A and 10B, and 11A and 11B.
And then the same kind of goes with the 3,4,5,6, because I do them 2 days in a row, but at different schools, and not only are the kids in the different schools at different levels, but they are at different points in the same book.
And then on top of that all, I rarely if ever get to spend any time repeating lessons. If I do, it's usually in a quick review. So I can never truly perfect a lesson (if there is such a thing), by figuring out what worked well, what didn't, and then doing it again with a different class and then archiving all of that so that I can use that information again in the future.
That's not to say I don't reflect on each lesson, write out how things went and how things might go better if I do something else, but there is no immediacy in it all, it's one shot and done. I save my comments with the lesson in a file, perhaps never to see it again (unless I need that particular lesson again...I hope I do...kind of). Compounded by the fact that it's with a different co-teacher and their style and involvement level being different each day and you have my weekly life...in the middle of nowhere.
And yet I think I like it?
Well...most of it.
Lesson planning is wicked hard for me. Even if I immediately know what I want them to learn, it seems a gigantic onion that needs to be peeled and I have trouble finding the starting point, let alone the points of progression. I feel like everyone else is so much more able, and that drives me crazy.
While that is a sticking point it has little to do with the transition. The difficulty is ultimately that I am teaching 10 or 11 different grades, (K, 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, and 11) with the 10th and 11th grades being 2 different levels within each grade so it's more like 10A and 10B, and 11A and 11B.
And then the same kind of goes with the 3,4,5,6, because I do them 2 days in a row, but at different schools, and not only are the kids in the different schools at different levels, but they are at different points in the same book.
And then on top of that all, I rarely if ever get to spend any time repeating lessons. If I do, it's usually in a quick review. So I can never truly perfect a lesson (if there is such a thing), by figuring out what worked well, what didn't, and then doing it again with a different class and then archiving all of that so that I can use that information again in the future.
That's not to say I don't reflect on each lesson, write out how things went and how things might go better if I do something else, but there is no immediacy in it all, it's one shot and done. I save my comments with the lesson in a file, perhaps never to see it again (unless I need that particular lesson again...I hope I do...kind of). Compounded by the fact that it's with a different co-teacher and their style and involvement level being different each day and you have my weekly life...in the middle of nowhere.
And yet I think I like it?
Well...most of it.
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