Every now and then throughout the school year, I will give “snapshots in time” so to speak, highlighting key days of the school year. There’s a little bit of mundaneness throughout most of the school year with very heavy repetition, so it’d be a bit boring to post about every single day.
But anyway, that brings us to Day 6, where I had my World History classes do a fun little activity related to geography. They created their own “globe of the world” cutting out different continents and pasting it onto a balloon. It’s a key highlight of the year and allows me to really see who is good at working at pairs, and who isn’t. Not a balloon popped so my expectations were quite clear!
Co-teaching is going well, and this is probably the best co-teacher I’ve had ever in terms of being on the same page with me. He also is able to connect with the jocks better than I ever was due to my sheer lack of strength. But also, my collaboration classes with my aide are also going well – she is also the best aide I ever had (especially since the ones at Dale were always either on their phone or just sitting down not helping the kids much).
My IB class is pretty locked in right now, taking down “notes” for their internal assessment (research paper). It’s quite different having 1 class of 34 students vs. 2 classes of 21 last year. I kind of miss the smaller class size. But in the end, it’s a good group of kids, even if I don’t feel like I’m doing much teaching the first month due to the onus being primarily on them.
Looking forward to the rest of the school year even though I know this is just the “honeymoon phase”, and a little bit of healthy conflict will eventually arise from in months to come.
