Second Year Retrospective (Part I)

The school year will be over this Thursday and it has been quite a ride.

I started out last August not being sure exactly what I would be teaching. In fact, the administration did not think they were going to have me on staff, so they had not worked me into the schedule. This ended up presenting an interesting opportunity: they asked me what I wanted to do.

I debated about the different possibilities, but decided on an option that would benefit the two other social studies teachers as well as myself. There was one 7th grade social studies teacher and one 8th grade social studies teacher already with full schedules (we had a very small 6th grade class this year and they just had one teacher that taught them each academic subject). I suggested to the other teachers and the administration that I split up classes with the 7th grade teachers on A days and with the 8th grade teacher on B days. We have block scheduling that alternates every day. Periods 1-4 are on A days and 5-8 on B days (85 minutes each). The administration liked this because it would be very easy to change the schedule. And the other teachers liked it because they would have small classes every other day. I liked it because I would have small classes, even though I'd have an extra class to prepare to compared with the other social studies teachers. Actually, this was also a benefit because I was able to get experience teaching two different classes.

So that is how things began. I would teach 7th grade Ancient World History and 8th grade early U.S. History. These were two incredibly interesting subjects to teach. And we had excellent new textbooks for each class as well. I was ready to go.