Week Thirteen Journal Entry

It's been interesting, in a bang-my-head-against-the-wall kind of way, to be in the school during standardized testing. Every teacher I've been around struggles with the issue of what to do with the students after morning testing. Administration discourages the teachers from covering new material or giving homework. So the teachers review basic material that is likely to be on the tests. This practice--testing in the morning, followed by an afternoon review in preparation for more testing--actually makes the monotony of standardized testing worse than it has to be. And this goes on for two weeks! Unbelievable.

Of course I am trying to form my own opinions as to what I will do when I am in charge of a classroom. Here are a few ideas--

• I think it would be a good time to play word games, like Scrabble.
• I'm collecting funny grammar bloopers that could be developed into mini language or grammar lessons (making grammar FUN is the eternal dilemma).
• The post-testing afternoons would also be a great time to let the students do sustained silent reading. I realize this might not work in every class. One of Mrs. B.'s honors classes has 28 students, with a high concentration of boys. They come into the classroom with pent-up energy, and I really can't imagine them settling down with a good book. But SSR would work in some classes.
• Maybe we could learn some jump-rope rhymes and go outside to jump rope. It's a poetry lesson in disguise, right? (This is beginning to sound like a multi-disciplinary P.E. unit in the making.)

So those are a few ideas. I hope to add more.

Contrary to our agreed-upon schedule, I told Mrs. B. that I would start teaching on Monday. When I initially agreed to this, I thought I would go ahead and begin teaching my 10-day units, but then I realized that I would see 5th period every day (the lunch period stays constant), but I might not see 6th period for two days in a row. The classes would get really out of synch. So I'm developing a fall-back plan. I think we'll study onomatopoeia on Monday; write haikus on Tuesday; and I'll start my 10-day units on Wednesday. These are self-contained lessons, and it won't matter if 6th period misses one of them.

If nothing else, I'm learning to roll with the punches.