I picked up my keys for my room during a break this week from our district orientation. It's a good sized room. I almost panicked just standing up there, feeling myself get completely overwhelmed and flustered. If I hadn't spent 5 hours at two different offices getting my TX license plates & "surrendering [my] Oregon license," I might have run immediately out of the building and started driving somewhere else. Not sure where. But, dammit, I'm going to see this through. Even if it kills me. Hopefully it won't. I have no idea how to set up my room. How do I arrange the desks? There is not a desk for me in the room... not sure how to handle that. There is actually absolutely nothing in the room. Not a poster. Nothing. Blank slate. How overwhelming.
I also picked up my class rosters, which made it all the more real. I have 6 classes= 4 English I (which is 9th grade English) & 2 English II (which is 10th grade English). At our school, being that it's a 9th grade only campus, if students don't pass a class (say, for example, math), they have to stay on our campus to repeat that class but don't necessarily repeat 9th grade. If they've passed English I already, they move on to English II, even though they are still technically freshmen and are on our campus. Looks like my largest class will be around 25 students, smallest 16.
I also finally got our curriculum, or rather the student workbooks of our curriculum which I was told 1) we should consider as a supplement & 2) the workbooks we have are workbooks that have been used, meaning that students have completed the activities, etc, and we're not slotted to have more ordered. So if I want to use something, I'll need to make my own copies. Tomorrow we start in-service and I meet not only our school staff but my department and learning teams. My department consists of two 2nd-year teachers (one of whom is the dept. head), myself and two other 1st-year teachers. Wow. And we don't really need to have consistency across the dept. And I don't know what we're supposed to read. Apparently 9th graders have to read Romeo & Juliet but that's the only state required text. I'm hoping tomorrow to have more info about what else we're supposed to teach but the sense I'm getting is that it's on me to figure that out. We have class copies of some novels: Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, Night. And a literature textbook which I'm not clear on whether the students have or not. The library at the school is lovely... but strangely empty. I haven't spent much time browsing but just glancing in there, I see a lot of empty shelves. And my dept. head said as much.
Ugh. I'm struggling to make a unit plan. What is it supposed to include??! I know that our focus is moreso on which particular skills students learn (since they can learn these skills through any text) than on which books they're supposed to read, but it's such a different way for me to conceptualize an English class because I'm so used to everything being based on the content.
The apartment is coming along though. I'm slowly accumulating furniture (yesterday a desk and a new printer) and decorating. I think I may have opened the last sealed box. Most things are getting organized. It's a good activity to do when avoiding planning. Though I think it just adds to my stress.
What's really frustrating is that we had a really good session on Saturday about ways to structure an ELA classroom. It was frustrating because 1) it's exactly the kind of information that I wanted all of institute to contain and 2) I find it fascinating and it makes me excited to teach, yet I don't really know how to do it. It sounds good in theory, but when I try to think through the details, I feel lost. Like teaching kids "scholarly language," the terms that they'll encounter on the state test (the TAKS), and the terms that will make them sound like educated members of the discipline, and the terms/phrases that they can learn to help them remember the things they are looking for when reading -- like "I infer that ____ and my textual evidence to support that is ____." Sounds awesome! Makes total sense! Makes me excited to think about teaching them how to be able to do this and the sense of power of knowing they'll have! How do I actually teach them that??
... So far my commute is fine. I liked having the time to drink my coffee, wake up, and sing to the radio. One of the Valley's downfalls is the lack of NPR. I'm just going to have to get podcasts to hold me over because there's only so much pop and awful DJ bantering that I can take. And the ratio of Spanish stations to English stations is like 5:1 so there are only so many channels to choose from. I partake in the Spanish stations occasionally but it just doesn't do it for me, probably because I can't understand it. There are also a lot of accordions.
A few other note-worthy items:
1) cracked windshields -- a majority of cars. Including mine now. I heard that people don't have to tie down loads here. There's also a ton of construction.
2) no mileage signs. You know, those helpful signs that tell you how many miles you are away from a particular city. You can use them to gauge how long until you get there. Don't exist here. Have to go by the water towers. Seriously.
3) there are fireflies here. Cool.
4) apparently the Valley has changed considerably in the last 20 years. The RGV is known for their grapefruit, but I haven't actually seen all that many orchards around here. There was a big freeze two winters out of three in the later 80s, which ruined a good portion of the trees. Farmers started selling out to developers and the region sprawled out over the last two decades. They still grow limes, grapefruit, cotton, and some other crops down here, but not nearly as much as they used to. And most of the fields I've seen must be cotton or other short crops.
5) Check out some of the flooding San Benito got with Hurricane Dolly. I heard our school was flooded and had a bit of damage. You can't even tell now though. And hurricane season lasts til November.
6) I'm becoming an enchilada connoisseur. It's like I can't get enough. I've had a few decent ones. The best by far was a chain in Houston. There's a fastfood chain here called Tacos Palanque, which was actually decent.
7) There's this sound that people make down here after they make a joke. It's like a little laugh/smirk noise, and it's a short "a" sound, like "back" but mainly just the "a." Someone will make a joke, then this "a" sound, really quick and deep (always the same intonation), then will usually say "just kidding." Seriously I've heard SO many locals do this. Is it from a tv show? A local celeb?
8) "Gucci B" = the name for the swanky HEB in north McAllen. It could be a contender with Whole Foods. Okay, not really, but I actually found more organic food than I've seen yet in RGV. I think I just found my fav grocery store.
7) There's this sound that people make down here after they make a joke. It's like a little laugh/smirk noise, and it's a short "a" sound, like "back" but mainly just the "a." Someone will make a joke, then this "a" sound, really quick and deep (always the same intonation), then will usually say "just kidding." Seriously I've heard SO many locals do this. Is it from a tv show? A local celeb?
8) "Gucci B" = the name for the swanky HEB in north McAllen. It could be a contender with Whole Foods. Okay, not really, but I actually found more organic food than I've seen yet in RGV. I think I just found my fav grocery store.
No comments:
Post a Comment