Things They Don't Teach You in Teacher School: #7-10

7. Very little actual planning occurs during pre-planning. For the most part, pre-planning is designed to be such a rigorous, time-consuming week of meeting after meeting that it is a relief when the students finally show up for class.
8. Administrators will discover new and wonderful tasks for you to do each year to enhance the student experience. These tasks will be required and involve either paperwork or e-work. Administrators have all summer to think up these educational enhancements and only forty hours of pre-planning to explain them all.
9. Administrators will never discover that some tasks no longer need to be done anymore because it turns out that the tasks were wasteful and of little worth.
10. Pray for your administrator. There is a reason that there is a high rate of turnover in school administrators. They are required to juggle the competing demands of parents, teachers, the school board, and students. Teachers are typically the first ball to be dropped by administrators under pressure. Don't take it personally.

#1-3 of this list appear here.
#4-6 of this list appear here.

Peace
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Pre-Planning Miscellany

School starts on August 13 at my new school. Since I am new there, I have to report on August 2 for two days of new faculty orientation. I have a lot to do between now and then so, naturally, I am going to the beach for a few days. I received my preliminary class rosters today, and if things stay the same, I will only have 47 students in my five classes (public school teachers typically have between 100-150). I can live with that grading load, but my Civil War class only has two students and my AP US history class has only five. I find that anything less than twelve makes for a challenging dynamic. Students tend to either get way too self-conscious or too comfortable in a small class. Our pre-planning schedule looks to be quite rigorous. My main complaint with my pre-planning experiences of late is that they mostly involve sitting for hours listening to someone else talk (a lot like what our students have to go through everyday) and very little "planning." In the past few years I have noticed that teachers (myself included) are the massive whiners and complainers. We also tend to be obnoxious know-it-alls (myself included). I have committed to being more positive this year.


I got my AP scores a few weeks ago: My AP US class got seven 5's (the highest possible score) out of sixteen students (44%). I am very pleased with that. One of my students sent me a postcard from Scotland where he is attending a Scottish history program at St Andrews to thank me (he got a five). Technically, he wrote, "I got a 5 woo-hoo." In light of my new commitment to positivity, I would rather not discuss the results of my AP European class.


We are going to Pensacola tomorrow so there will probably be no posts until Wednesday. I have three books I need to read by Thursday.


Peace
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