I find myself becoming more and more involved with my school community, however, I feel that at times, I am also suffocating myself with my job.  Whether it is advising a class or a club, coaching, or any other extra curricular, I feel like I usually pick up the slack where others just don’t want to.  When the new year starts, I am going to work on saying no, not to everything but certain projects, that I know will consume too much of my time.  I hope that this can help me to become a better teacher, coach, adviser, or whatever my title may be.

Everyone has the few in class that barely do anything.  How do we motivate them?  What could entice them to get work done for you?  It is frustrating as an educator to see kids “wasting” their time on a daily basis.  Sometimes you get the questions like “why are we doing this?” or “when will I ever use this?”  but lately I’ve had the type of students who either put their head down and do nothing or just sit there not doing a thing.  I’ve been to the meetings, I’ve met with the parents and I’m still a loss.  Is this a generational thing or has this always existed?  A typical response is, I am just going to drop out and get a GED anyways.  Why is the high school diploma so devalued? I guess this is recent frustration and I am sure that i am not a lone.  Thank you for the vent!

Why does it feel like on a year to year basis there isn’t consistency?  “Everyone” has a genius idea that is suppose to revolutionize education, but instead it has teachers jumping through various hoops; at time it feels like we should all be in the circus instead of educating young people.  I find that this happens everywhere too.  Whether it is the day to day job, for a class you may be taking, maybe something “mandated” by the government, it seems like no one from the outside actually knows what the job entails and just likes to pile on extra tasks, “just because.”  Quite honestly, i don’t feel any of them are making me a better teacher.  Sure I can reflect all day long on my practices, but where does that leave me for planning when the kids walk in the door?  Can we just get back to the basics instead of having to complete a million tasks that prove we are teaching?  I can write things on paper, but that doesn’t mean its getting done, and some of the best lessons I’ve ever taught were out of the blue when I was just going with the flow.  I wonder if anyone will ever realize that they are driving good, qualified teachers away with all of the absurd requirements they ask of us.  Just some food for thought, and a little vent of course haha…

Tomorrow is the half day before Thanksgiving.  Most half days seem like a waste and I know that is also felt by other teachers and is also the expectations of students.  So what do you do on a half day?  We normally have 84 minute blocks, and the half day reduces the time down to around 40 minutes.  I know this is normal time for period scheduling, but for me, it is like the blink of an eye.  How can you fill the time, what can you do to still be productive, or is it ok to have a “free” day.  What do others do.  I plan on filling my day tomorrow with a short quiz and some demos.

So, every year, when school starts, it seems like a million new things get dumped on you.  Whether is is evaluations, improving curriculum, observations by various organizations, etc.  How can you balance your job of teaching students and the paperwork to be compliant with school and state administrators?  I feel sometimes this job goes from regular hours to lots of “over time.”  Will the hoops that we all jump through ever stop?  How is it possible that we can focus on our real job of educating youth when we have to fill out paperwork or provide evidence all of the time?  I know we all struggle with this, but how do we all get through?  We all seem to persevere so may be it isn’t all that bad?

We have about 3 full weeks of instruction time left in the school year and my mind is starting to switch gears to finals mode.  As I start to tie up loose ends and bring the semester to a close, I am curious of different review techniques that anyone may use to help prepare for finals.  Does any one find certain strategies more effective than others?  How many days do you set aside for review for your finals?

On a side note, in chemistry, there is a lot of lab equipment to be aware of.  Do you do any kind of lab practical test to go along with you final?  If so, what does it consist of?

Any and all help would be great!

So, after being out for a few days for both professional and personal reasons, I feel like the end of the year is going to be a whirlwind.  We have just over 30 days of school left, including finals and I worry about covering all content areas.  How does one go about handling this?  Is it better to cover every content standard in a “watered down” way or is it better to go in depth and miss out on certain standards?  I feel this is  something that most teachers could struggle with, but I wonder how everyone deals with it?  Does it vary from year to year?  Do you assess you student population to figure out which would be best?  Any thoughts would be appreciated!

So at our school we have advisory block: every Tuesday, the first 40 minutes of the day are designated to certain “clubs” so to speak.  We have various advisories which benefit the student population of the school such as recycling, the domestic violence task force, and drug and alcohol awareness.  Students get to sign up and be a part of which ever advisory they want to and work to create a working relationship with their peers and the teachers that run the advisory.

Needless to say, the advisory that I am a part of was nominated to go to a conference for 3 days next week.  I am truly honored to be a part of this conference because the work that we do in our advisory is not only important for our students and our school but our town, the country and the whole world as well.  I am very please to represent our school at this conference.

The question that I pose to you is how do you prepare lessons for you students for 3 days of absence?  I can see a days worth of plans and even back to back days, but 3 seems like a long period of time.  It will run from Tues-Thur and then we have Friday off from school as well.  Is there any way to keep students focused in my absence?  What would you suggest to keep students on task so that upon our return they are ready to go?

So, in my first 3 years of teaching I’ve been told that the only constant in education is change.  I have noticed that this is a fairly true statement.  Recently, the state of Massachusetts has adopted a new hybrid version of the NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards).  These new standards realign some curriculum for teachers within their grade levels.  Thankfully, at first glance, it appears the subjects that I teach have only slightly changed.  The last set of science standards, which were created about 10 years ago, were from my understanding, the first concrete set of science standards.  Ten years later we have a new set of science standards.  My question is how do you adjust to changes like this?  I am curious if other states have a turnover of standards and how frequently you may encounter this?  When I spent time working in North Carolina, I noticed that their standards were very detailed as to what teachers should be teaching.  The Massachusetts standards appear less detailed, and the new standards appear even less detailed.  Is this leaving room for teachers to focus on what they feel is important?  I guess the only way to tell what is really expected will be to look at released state exams when they come along.  Until then, I will try and dissect these new standards in preparation for a turn over.

Here is a link to the new Mass standards:

http://www.doe.mass.edu/stem/review.html

With the semester coming to a close and finals less than a week away, i am curious as to how others plan, prep and create their finals.  I normally try to go back, look at problem areas and throw a couple of those problems on the test as well as other basic knowledge questions.  I like to try and address all content standards as well as provide a variety of types of questions – multiple choice, short answer, matching, etc.  These questions make up about 75% of my final.  For the remaining part, I like to select questions from our past state tests to ensure students are progressing in a manner acceptable by state education administration.  I am curious of others and how they prepare for the end of their semesters?

• In the state of Massachusetts not all students are subjected to each science test.  It is the school districts decision as to which science exam the students will take.  Our school elects to take the biology test, and since I teach mostly chemistry and one physics class, I am able to show students questions that they would never have seen in the past.