Life is so crazy I didn't even realize it has been two weeks since my last blog. Lots of news to behold. I'll absolutely find it impossible to share it all but here it goes.
The first thing is that most things at school are going well. Classes are well established and the kids, for the most part, are into the swing of things. However, like most places there is a small percentage of students who are more interested in the quality of their nail polish or what other other students are doing with their lives than actually going to school for what a teenager is supposed to do (study, that was not a trick question). Anyway, It is three partial weeks and one full week in, almost halfway through the first quarter and I have my small cadre of students who are currently running a 19% or 32% grade so far. Tuesday notices go to parents so I probably will have a flurry of parent-teacher conferences right after.
The place where school is NOT going well is the schedule. We went three wees and everything was fine. Then the Powers That Be (PTB) announced a schedule change for the entire secondary school. Many teachers learned they were teaching completely different classes. Not I, since my classes are so specialized but it did scramble who I saw when. We got a full half day warning before the schedule flipped.
But when there is a flip there will be a flop, so when we walked into school the following Wednesday one of the admin assistants was waiting at the bus stop to hand out NEW SCHEDULES THAT WERE TO START THAT DAY! There were so many bad parts to this it could take me hours to vent. First, I had expected two prep periods that day, so I had been planning to use my lunch period to give some makeup tests to some students. I also had planned to spend some time during one prep period finishing some handouts to use during a couple of my afternoon classes.
With the new schedule, I had no prep periods, none. So with me having to pull duty during first recess, and the make-up tests during lunch, I did not have a single break for any reason all day. This meant I had no break to prepare my materials for my afternoon class. Worse, I now had classes for which were not previously scheduled for that day, so students showed up with no books, since many had left the books at home, thinking there would be no class.
In the few times I had a moment to speak to one of administration, I was not diplomatic in saying how horrid I thought this had been handled. Even worse in my book, we never received an explanation as to why the major schedule change was needed, nor received any reason why they couldn't wait even 24 hours to let teachers have a chance to adjust.
Grrr!
On a quasi-plus side, I've agreed with Blue Hill College here in Guayaquil to teach some history classes. I'll be teaching an American History, 1945-Present Class starting on May 5. Of course, I still am teaching a full spread of classes in the day, PLUS tutoring a group of pilots for their English Certification Test. PLUS I am still finishing off the first stage of a teaching certification program through a distance learning program.
No stress here.
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