Free At Last...

or at least for the day. Teaching gives a whole new meaning to Monday holidays. My daily to-do list is actually manageable: Status upcoming weekly plan; Print rubric for Personal Narrative; Print Peer Review Sheet; Print upcoming Daily Oral Language and Vocabulary Quiz and Test; Print Mango Street activity; Create new Vocabulary Board Sheets because I haven't liked the one that has been in use for the past four months; Print out this week's vocabulary activity sheet; and, last, my favorite - Redesign Bulletin Boards.
Check; Done; Done; Getting There; Ditto; Done and Done.Coffee time for Ms. Productive.

From now on I am going to...

After five months of teaching I finally have my head around my purpose. Amazing, actually. Thirteen years of elementary and secondary school, four years of college and four years of law school PLUS graduate classes in education did very little to imbue me with the confidence for which I was so desperately searching to kick-start the belief that I knew what I was doing in my classroom every single day - as a classic A-type personality, waiting wasn't an acceptable option. Watching, asking questions, head-butting with one or two inordinately stubborn souls (ridiculous, really - if I may be so honest), asking more questions - and a huge dose of common sense and survival skills helped me to begin lining up my ducks. Now, I'm not sitting here thinking I've mastered the art and craft of teaching, that would be silly, Silly, but at least I have grabbed on to a reference point.

The whole idea in a proverbial bread basket is as follows -and relax, there's only four, not eighty-eight:
(A) Assess and know your State's curriculum framework and what is expected of you at your grade level;
(B) Before you begin, decide exactly what it is that you want your students to learn from the particular lesson at hand;
(C) Create a dynamic, challenging plan developed from your own understanding of the material, coupled with the classroom text chosen by your administration, and other assorted sources of information (do not fear the internet - I've found some amazing material to tweak to my liking) to meet the objectives that you set out in Essential (B), then last but certainly not least,
(D) Drop back ten and punt - to a certain extent your students will guide you with respect to pacing and level of conversation/discussion/exasperation, but never lose sight of the ultimate purpose of the plan and G.E.T. T.H.E.R.E. Sounds easy, right? I've got my head around the rest of the year and time to start planning for six weeks of lazy days at the beach and nightly bubble baths, right?

Not exactly - But at least I am no longer sleeping less than a newborn between the hours of midnight and five a.m.

My next Unit is scheduled to begin on February 4th and I've got the butterflies All Over Again.
(1) What am I going to do?
(2) How am I going to teach this?
(3) What was I thinking - am I absolutely crazy giving up a lucrative law practice for this???

To Ms. I-Need-To-Worry-About-Something-Because-I'm-Italian,
I say:

(1) Pull up your big girl panties and figure this out - now - go - make it work.
(2) One day at a time - with lots and lots of preparation beforehand (sorry you last-minute-Lucy's, a truly effective teacher, and one who values her sanity, cannot avoid this. TRUST ME, I tried).
(3) Nope, not one teeny-weeny bit.

Life's good...I'm one smart chick :)