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| Data wall at the ready. Awaiting student achievement. |
School
starts Monday. For the past two weeks, I’ve been through a slew of professional
training and planning sessions, many of which were not strictly applicable to
my new discipline of psychology. In fact, my Masters classes, TFA training, and
CMS sessions have all made me aware of how very marginalized psychology is in
the social studies world. It’s an afterthought stuffed into the back trailers
and tagged on to the list of disciplines at the very end of a series of
shout-outs when a presenter is trying to figure out why I haven’t raised my
hand to identify with a course. It’s cool. I don’t mind my classes lurking in
the shadows, and if I have any deep lasting issues about the marginalization of
psychology, I’ll take them to my therapist for meta-analysis.
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| One semester's worth of vocab, already up. |
My
trailer is deliciously optimized for student organization. If you’re not a
teacher, you won’t understand my delight in knowing how I want my classroom to
work and making it all just so. My student organization this semester is, to someone
turned on by organization, incredibly exciting. Just look at the pictures and
understand my glee.
Last
year at this time, I was freaking out. Right now I feel an exhilarated
serenity. True, I’m locked out of my account so I can’t see my rosters or make
seating charts, and the computers and internet and projector in my trailer
don’t work, and I don’t have enough books for all my students, and we’ve been
told that we’re not to teach content the first three days, but you know, I’m
okay with that. I’ve got enough of a macro-sense of where we’re going as a
class, that I trust the details will find their place.
In
district training, as we sat through two hours of mind-numbing boredom, the
district Social Studies guy asked us, “what do you love? What do you really
love?” Behind me, an antediluvian teacher muttered loudly, “sex.” Gotta love
those teachers old enough not to give one single care.
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| Well-stocked teacher supply cabinet. Complete with stuffed... thing... to relieve student freak-outs. Worked last year. |
We
were given our duty rosters, and one of the tall male teachers commented that
he doesn’t feel safe where his duty is, behind the back trailers. It’s true,
but crazy. How can kids feel safe where teachers don’t?
I’m
taking on new leadership roles this year. I volunteered to be the Faculty
Advisory Committee member for our department, which means that everyone
complains to me and then I meet with all the other representatives across the
school and we formulate recommendations to the principal. I feel this will be a
highly entertaining, if not necessarily productive, way to spend my evenings.
Tomorrow
I meet my new students! Students! All the blissful complexity of students! Just
thinking of the challenges sends a surge of adrenalin through me. Every
glue-gun burn and paper cut and the toe I may have permanently maimed by
running a cart with 40 psychology books over it feels like a battle scar of
love right now.
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| Can't nobody say they didn't know something was due this year. Note the interactive student notebook table of contents beside the calendar. Student organization for the win! |
On
Friday, one of my old students was on campus for driver’s ed, and came running
across the quad to hug me. She’s the sort who spreads a frisson of mayhem
wherever she goes simply by the enormous size of her personality, but we loved
each other and I was often able to harness her character into propelling the
class forward. She promised to tell everyone where my new room is, and as I finesse
my first powerpoints and put the finishing touches on objective clarity, I’m
filled by little shivers of anticipation for this school year prompted by her reminder of the connections that teaching offers. I do
something that matters, something that I love, and now I know how
to do it. Bring it, 2014-2015. I’m ready for you.
P.S. My IB students lack enough textbooks for all of them. You can help. Check out my classroom projects at:
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| Course mantra. |
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| Permission to diverge, granted. |
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| Lest they think we're not talking about feminism this year... |
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| Dance, students, dance. |
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