Naked Dreams

I’m already starting to have dreams of inadequacy.  No naked ones yet, but definitely headed in that direction.  So far they are just dreams in which I can’t figure out something really basic, like putting on underwear.  It seems like it’s just a matter of time until I fall asleep to find myself completely naked [...]

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In which I read the pacing chart…

Well, I read it.  I just couldn’t resist.  I’d heard so much about the pacing charts and where writing might be able to squeeze in, or not.  Thinking it couldn’t be as bad as all that, I just had to take a peek at it.  At first it delineates reading clusters (translate: genres?) by quarter, [...]

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Summertime and the living is easy?

I am officially on vacation. I managed to slog through my last week of work, pack everything up for my move to the middle school and only take a few things home. The summer looks long, yet I know it will be over in an instant. I have so much to do [...]

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Ready, set, summer!

Okay now, the office is packed, my summer goals are set and as of tomorrow afternoon I’m off for the summer. The thing is, I have planned enough stuff to do this summer to take a year off, and I only have about a month, six weeks at the most. Planning curriculum, finishing [...]

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Wordie: AVID ELD or ELD AVID?

This application is interesting. I found myself altering my words to make the word cloud better fit my main idea. Could this somehow be used in editing the content of student work? A way to show them what they have really focused on? It is at minimum a demonstration of redundancy. [...]

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Packing it all up again

For the past three or four years I have packed up my work stuff and moved each year. The first year it wasn’t much, I just took stuff little by little to a room hidden away on the second floor of the district office, where I worked part of the day. It was [...]

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Middle Schoolers vs. High Schoolers

I have taught high school for about fourteen years. I get high school. They come in a little nervous and squirrely, but still have an earnestness, a desire to be successful. At least some of them do. Some of them lost that long before high school and never seem to find [...]

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Pacing: Standards or Curriculum?

It seems that next year I’ll be teaching middle school English Language Development (ELD) and ELD AVID. I’m excited about that, and a little nervous. I have only taught high school, never middle school, and in middle school they use (gulp!) pacing charts. And have a district coach who makes sure people [...]

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