Well, lately posts have been few and far between, but my life has been kind of hit and miss lately too. We're getting to the crazy part of the year where the kids get anxious to be free for the summer and I'm getting anxious to move and re-establish myself someplace new. Tests and grading, sports and school activities, interviews and lots and lots of driving.... all of these are kind of taking the majority of my time at the moment.
School's good though, for the most part. About once each week, more this past week, I get completely annoyed with the behavior of my students. It's so difficult to maintain order and discipline when it's 95 degrees outside and summer looms only 21 or so days away. I can just feel the anxiety in the air when I walk through the corridor in the mornings while kids wait to come to class. Absolutley crazy!
Not doing a whole lot of new "teaching" at the moment. I kind of skipped right over poetry and went straight to creative writing, which I think my kids are enjoying a little more than they would be reading a novel or studying grammar. Lately I've been discussing the plot elements and story structure, which I think is important for the kids to know, but more than anything else, there's more "fun" stuff involved when the kids get to choose what it is that they're writing. This week we did some of those pass-around stories where each student added a line, and then we did some comparisons of them to analyze differences. Right up until noon on Friday, the kids were loving it... then the weekend became more than just a though. We're also going to be doing a project next week dealing with short stories and fiction. I'm going to have the kids scribble a bunch of lines and then they're going to have to come up with a shape/character to write their stories about. I imagine the kids enjoying it, but I also forsee some problems with actually visualizing something in the scribbles that they can pick out and use as a character. This is definately going to require some serious modeling for them I think... could be a busy week doing that.
Not much to report in the Interview process just yet. I've got one in Mesa this Friday, and I'm going to try and get another interview or two set up for Friday morning in Scottsdale. We'll see how that might develop over the course of the week... Still hoping for high school, but the possiblity of teaching middle school is starting to settle itself on the back of my mind... Sent in an application for Paradise Valley this week as well, since that's where a buddy works and his middle school is going to have at least 2 English openings next fall.
No news is good news at the moment I guess.... but I would love to hear a little news saying that I've got a job if I want it. At this point, I'm taking whatever is offered and then I'll consider other options if those arise. I'm fairly comfortable with all of the districts that I've applied to, so I think I'd be happy regardless of where I teach.... Until then...
