Again I haven't blogged for ages so I apologise for being slack. I guess there are not many things going on in my life at the moment that are interesting enough to blog about so I might just blog about my feelings.
I am a bit apprehensive about next year. At the moment I am spending my days (in between sailing and walking to the beach and getting sunburnt - I really should buy some sunscreen) studying the Russian Revolution in order to organise myself for teaching Yr 12 History next year. Somehow it was so much easier when I thought that I was teaching English. I guess there wasn't that load of content to learn like there is in History. English has content, don't get me wrong, but it is content like issues and novels and themes and character relationships and those are the things that are second nature to me, not remembering dates and years and facts and figures. My passion for history comes from a firm belief that we should know what has happened in the past and learn from it so that we do not repeat the mistakes that those before us have made. I like the action and reaction aspect of history and the feeling I get when I realise why something is the way it is today because of something that I have learnt from the past. (I dont even know if that all made sense so I will change the topic).
As well as the content being intimidating, I will be working with a teacher next year who is new to the school, because my colleague who was teaching both history classes this year has taken another position. This concerns me because of the 'unknown' factor. I have only met the new teacher twice, and really don't know how we are going to go working together. The school that she is coming from is very different from our school and she is used to having only 7 students in her year 12 class whereas she will have at least 22 next year. I was really hoping, I guess, for someone to give me guidance, and I really don't know now if that will be the case.
To make matters even more interesting, the course has changed for next year, which means that I cannot just follow the lead of the teacher who is leaving and pirate all of his SACs etc, because they all have to be written from scratch.
The upside to this is that there will be plenty of PD opportunities for me next year (I am booked into 2 already!) I am eager and willing I suppose so I will just do my best I guess.
Anyway, I guess that it is another challenge for me to face, and so long as I dont fall on my arse next year, it should make me a better teacher and better able to help design curriculum and plan out my year from scratch.
I feel like I am rambling a bit now.
Onto other news. Another task that I am undertaking next year is a website for my students. I am in the middle of designing the website, with the help of a good friend from school who is a bit of a guru, and I intend to put up lecture notes and information for my Year 12's so that they can work at home and print things out at home, and to have online tasks for my Year 7's and Year 11's. I am really interested in making better use of ICT in my classrooms next year, and I have managed to get my Year 7 class timetabled into a computer lab once a week in order to have them do more online tasks, and to better utilise computers, not just as a way to type up a story or some work, but as a way to enhance their learning and to enhance their expression of their english work.
I did a PD a couple of weeks ago on using ICT in the classroom. It was quite interesting - nothing that I thought was revolutionary, but a lot of interesting ideas. The guy running the PD comes from a laptop school and decided that if they were going to use laptops then he was not going to use paper at all. He therefore had lots of ideas about how to bring computers into the classroom. Some of the ideas I felt werent enhancing tasks that we already do, but were merely transferring a lot of what teachers already do, into an electronic medium. I am not interested in doing things on the computer that we could do just as well on paper. Even so, there were also a lot of ideas in the PD that translated into new and interesting activities to try out in the computer lab. Now all I have to do is work out the things I will use and start designing the tasks for next year so I can put them up on my site!
The more I sit here typing the more I realise how ambitious I am being these holidays with the amount of things I am trying to get done. I guess that is why I have chained myself to the study this week!
Oh well, the longer I sit here the less I get done!
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