Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Welcome back, friends.

I had a fabulous time with my third hour today. Truly glorious. We started out discussion prefixes--not always the most scintillating subject, but it segued into a discussion about Minnesotan dialect and dialects in general. Totally delicious, since this is the class that I've been trying to dance harder for since the first day.

On the other end of the spectrum is the meeting after school with one of the big dogs from Downtown. It was meant to be a discussion about moving to a 3x6 schedule for next year. The example schedule had kids down to only two trimesters of science and social by their junior year, and only two trimesters of world language.

Big dog wasn't very helpful. Questions from staff like, "have you asked students who have been through schedule changes how prepared the felt for college?" were dismissed. Even though the district mission is to be in the top 10% of schools and be exceptional, the big dog said he had long resented the NCAA's influence on education and made a comment along the lines of, 'and how many NCAA athletes come from here, anyway?'

So, not feeling respected or understood by downtown. In fact, feeling steamrolled and mistreated. Boo.

1 comment:

  1. I also had an awesome lesson recently. My Media classes are starting on their culture & values unit, and today's discussion went really well. The class I'm trying to "dance harder for" used some wonderful vocab. from the last unit. My other two sections made it through less of the notes than expected, because their on-topic comments were so insightful that we had to explore them.

    Reading your positive remarks about your classroom reminds me to keep my victories in perspective, rather than shuffling them off to the side while I just worry over the struggles. Thanks!

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