First Weekend in Perryville

10/24/10

The last couple of days have been rather uneventful, but that has been kind of nice.  I have spent the afternoons at the school going through lesson plans and text books trying to find my way through the curriculum they are using.  Thankfully the substitute teacher that was here for two and a half weeks before me left me about a week of lessons plans, which is nice.  At least it gives me a starting point.  Unfortunately, I don’t really have any idea what some of her plans mean.  She left me lots of notes and indicators, but stuff is spread out all over the room and it’s been difficult to try and form everything into a cohesive plan or schedule.  I suppose that’s bound to happen when you teach multiple grade levels in one classroom, but I have never done that before, so I’m not quite sure how to organize myself.

The reading and literacy curriculum that they are using is called Reading Mastery.  I have thumbed through the teacher’s manuals and tried to make sense of it.  It seriously lays out your lesson plan for you word for word what you are supposed to say and what the students are supposed to say.  It seems a little bit constraining and forced, but supposedly it is a program proven to work with struggling readers.  It would be nice, though, if the teacher’s manual was all contained nicely and neatly in one book…or maybe two…heck, even three would be okay.  There are seriously about 3 manuals along with 3-5 supplementary/resource books for each grade, and I have three different grade levels to teach (because the student who is supposed to be in third grade is doing second grade work).  So that’s like 20 or so different manuals, workbooks, resource books, etc. that I have to work with and navigate through, and that’s just for reading and language!  I guess that I could maybe understand that many materials in a regular classroom where the teacher is only teaching one grade level.  It might be nice and even useful to have all those resources and references available, but in this kind of setting….it’s just plain confusing!  I’m going to need some serious sticky notes and tab marker thingys to help me know where the heck I am in each book with each student for each day.  Holy smokes!  These people did not think this through!  Hopefully after I’ve been in the classroom and worked with it and gone through it with the kids a few times I’ll start to get the hang of it, and maybe even appreciate it a little more.  But right now, I pretty much hate Reading Mastery.  My plan for now is to just do the best I can to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing when I start teaching tomorrow, and whatever I can’t figure out on my own, I’ll just ask the kids.  They’re only K-3^rd, I’m sure they’ll be happy to give me some assistance.

If Reading Mastery isn’t enough to tackle, it turns out I also have to teach gym.  I was just kind of planning on teaching them some new games and going outside to let them run around, but it sounds like the head teacher, Linda, isn’t so keen on that.  Apparently playing games does not allow kids to strengthen their muscles and develop coordination, which is true, but I’m only here for four weeks, I mean, I’m not a miracle worker.  Thankfully there is a P.E. curriculum folder as well with plans, so at least I won’t have to come up with stuff on my own.  Teaching gym is going to be an interesting experience, but probably valuable.  Jack Black says that “Those who can’t do teach, and those who can’t teach, teach gym.”  So it can’t be that hard, right?  He he.

I’ve decided that I’m not going to let all of these things overwhelm me or stress me out.  Because even if I crash and burn, and even if I don’t teach the lessons exactly the way they’re supposed to be taught, and even if it’s really difficult….If I think about it, I am really doing the school a favor.  They were in a pickle and needed a sub last minute, so as long as I can survive and keep it together, and as long as the school doesn’t burn down because of me I’m doing okay.  That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to try to do a good job, but if everything doesn’t go excellently I’m not going to get upset, because I’m just filling in and holding down the fort until the permanent teacher gets here.  I’m not going to set myself up for failure before anything even happens, but I’m also not going to expect everything to be perfect.  I’m just going to try to have a go with the flow kind of attitude.  And once this is all over, I guess that all of these things that are really challenging and that I have never done before are just going to make me even more impressive on a resume ;-)

On a non-school related note, the weather here is incredibly unpredictable.  Today it is absolutely beautiful outside, and I hope to take a walk down to the beach.  However, I have had so many people warn me about bears that I am a little freaked out to go anywhere by myself, even in broad daylight.  I can see the beach from my apartment, though, so it’s not like it’s far.  Anyhow, so far in the few days that I have been here I have learned that the old saying, “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes” is actually true here.  When I got here on Friday there was no wind at all.  I could tell because there are wind turbines in this village and they weren’t moving.  But once I had unpacked and taken a while to set up my apartment I looked out the window and those things were spinning like crazy.  Then a bit later there was rain pounding against my window, which only lasted for about 15 minutes or so, and then the sun came back out.  It’s a good thing that the walk from school to my apartment is not far at all, or I would have to bring all of my outdoor gear with me all of the time because I would never be prepared for what the weather was going to do.

Well, I suppose that I should try to prepare for math and gym for tomorrow.  I don’t know that there’s much else I can do for reading and language.  I’ll just have to figure it out as I go.  Hopefully the kids will like me and it won’t matter if I know what I’m doing or not.