My Seemingly Boring Life

My days right now would seem pretty bland to most of the population, of that I am sure. I get up at 5:15 (before my alarm goes off), get ready for work, and I am walking through the door of my classroom by about 6:15. I plan, I teach, I eat, I teach, I plan some more, and then I leave at about 4:30 only to come home, eat, plan, and sleep. When I put it like this it seems even worse than it is in my head. I am spending all my time preparing for a job that I am not even getting paid for. In fact, I am paying to do this job...just one of the beauties of my masters program.

At least I think it is fun. This last week I have had students run up and down stairs to learn scientific notation and the metric system, swing meter sticks around like swords and light sabers (sp?), learn about Fibonacci, and race around the room to find the leaf in the leaf line up. It has been a pretty eventful week considering all I taught about was measuring and the metric system.

To top it off I got into some trouble with the administration because I am teaching something different than the other 6th grade science teachers. We are actually all doing our own thing around the same topics. The 6th grade house leader wants us all to be doing the exact same thing on the same day. Well, I am sorry but I teach science and we only have enough equipment for one class at a time. Which means that while we all did the same 2 day activity we all did it on different days, spanning over 10 days. This means we have to have different ways of teaching the same material because we have to font load some learning depending on when we get the materials. Even after this has been explained the administration doesn't quite understand.

One of the great thing about teaching is you can be really creative about how you teach a topic. You can cater to the kids you have. We can't all teach the exact same way because we are different people. If I wanted to have my curriculum handed to me each morning and basically read off a script I would have chosen to work in the Bellevue School District. What they are asking for is teacher proof teaching. And yet, they all talk about the "great" teachers of the world. Let me tell you this...Those great teachers are not reading someone else's lesson plans every day doing exactly what is written on the sheet and then moving on to the next day, no thought involved.