Feeling prepared... sorta

Twenty-one days from the start of school and I think I'm feeling ready this time. I should explain that when I was hired last year, it was one week before the start of the school year. That might not sound like a bad thing, but I spent my entire summer (in-between submitting applications) believing I would be teaching at the high school level. I planned for 9th-10th grade novels and discussions and whatnot.

Then I was hired to teach 8th grade Language Arts and Social Studies. That threw a whole new wrench into the works. I had never taught Social Studies and being a first year teacher, I'd never done Language Arts on my own either. So this time around I feel a little bit better about my situation. I'm only doing Language Arts this year, which simplifies things despite the fact that I will sorely miss teaching the Twentieth Century history. I actually have my units semi-planned, as opposed to the week-at-a-time planning of last year.

I also spent my first year taking advantage of a good deal of the extra training they provide for our teachers, and I think that's elevated me fairly quickly to a person others come to for help. I'm already the default tech-guy for our portion of the building when the normal tech person is gone. It's been nice to have that extra degree of responsibility, even so early in my career, because I think it distracts me from just how terrified I might otherwise be.

Eventually I'll get around to adding some lessons/units to this blog and (hopefully) get some constructive criticism on them from all you lovely fellow teachers out there.