Today is the first day that I sort of feel well again. I was kind of getting sick of hearing myself feeling unwell so it is nice to feel okay again. And out of the haze comes the catching up process. I have managed (through going home and sleeping when I wasn't teaching) to miss very few classes. I am not behind, but I am not as far forward as I should be at this point in time. The problem with trying to move so full-steam ahead all the time is that when you are not steaming ahead so quickly you feel like you are going backward.
This last week and a bit has been interesting. Out of the haze of my illness I am finally able to lift my head up and reassess where I am with all of my classes, where I should be and where to from here. I don't enjoy the feeling of dealing with the next thing that hits my plate without too much forward planning, however my life this year (and particularly the way the BYTES program has been running) actually necessitates this approach. No matter how organised I am or how much I forward plan, things are still coming up, and often at the last minute that need to be dealt with and leave me with no choice but to rejig my plans.
There have been some interesting developments with BYTES of late. As always with a new program, particularly when you are developing it as you go without much of a template, there has been a bit of unrest amongst some of the natives.
This round of BYTES modules sees the introduction of the compulsory English eZines module where the students create their own online zine on a topic of their choice. The students, in their publication groups, have meetings at the start of each session in order to set their goals and work out who is responsible for each task each session and are working in a self-paced way to produce lots of different types of articles, interviews, and graphics to populate their eZine.
The unrest is coming from a couple of places. There has been a niggling complaint about the lack of communication about what is actually being taught in the sessions. As always with BYTES, the curriculum planning is falling on my shoulders and due to my illness, the final version of the lesson plans were not available until Friday for the BYTE starting Monday. Most of the staff are used to working this way, and whilst it will be different next year when there is more time and more of the curriculum is already written, this year the BYTES staff are using their initiative and taking the plans, with little prior warning, and running with it. Most of the staff have been brilliant at this. Some are a bit resistent. I happened to walk into my AP's office in the middle of a class the other day to hear one of the staff members sooking about his lack of knowledge about what was happening in the class. I took the opportunity to point out that nobody in that room (and their were 6 staff members teaching that group at the time) had any more prior knowledge than he did, but three of the members came up to me with their lesson plans printed off, rolled up their sleeves, worked out what needed to be done and actually took over the running of the session from me so that I could go home (sick). I pointed out that it was only him and another staff member who wandered around looking like they had no idea of what they were supposed to be doing - everyone else got on with it and made the curriculum their own.
The issue seems to be that some staff members have been working on the small group BYTES on their own, and have not been involved in the large group BYTES that involve team teaching and shared responsibility. What annoys me is not that he is having difficulty adjusting but that he complains without offering constructive ideas for improvement and also that he never complains to me when I am the one that he is complaining about. I guess that for some of the staff the 'fly by the seat of your pants' teaching style that BYTES relies upon is a bit of an adjustment. In general though most of the staff have been fantastic.
The other issue is coming from the Year 9 staff members themselves. Year 9 English gave up a period per week (so from 5 periods down to 4) in order to enable the BYTEs program to go ahead, and in return has it's own 10 week BYTE that all students must complete. In return, the media task that Year 9 students were supposed to complete within English classes has been scrapped. Unfortunately the Year 9 teachers feel that they are struggling to get through the other items they are meant to be teaching in Year 9 English and because of this are starting to get angry. Whilst they realise that it seems that they are not going to be getting back their period any time soon, it is also becoming evident that they want something to give. We have suggested that one of the writing pieces being developed for the eZine could count toward their writing folio, thus giving them one assessment task less to complete in class but they don't seem to be taking that idea on board. I guess I will just have to wait and see what comes of the whole affair. I do know for certain however that they will not be getting that period back - BYTES is here to stay so they will have to find another way to be happy with the arrangement.
In all I am looking forward to this weekend with the hope that I will actually unpack my guilt bag, do the work I bought home with me and go back to school on Monday feeling on top of things. My other resolution is to blog more... okay so I still have work to do on that one!
