Planning Only Gets You So Far

You'd think I'd have the planning process down pat by now with all the work I did this summer, but no such luck! Most of my planning focused on revamping the materials that went with the curriculum, and not the actual curriculum itself. BIG MISTAKE! American lit is already not my favorite, so not pre-reading was a bad choice on my part. Nearly all the curriculum from previous years is super dry and boring. Very classic, but very boring. After just two short stories, I knew something had to change. I polled my Facebook friends (thanks!) and came up with a new list of American lit short stories that are a little more exciting/creepy.

It turns out that I am liking my freshman classes more than I anticipated. This is of course a nice surprise! ;) While it can be difficult to get them to stop talking, I like their energy and enthusiasm for school (some of them anyway).

My real struggle has been with the Journalism program. While I do have one class a day for this, many of my students are not exactly "go-getters". Sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get them to do anything at all! But I've found that giving them more time (and I mean LOTS more time) has helped. It has also been a bit of a setback that the technology we work with is so old. I mean 10+ years old. There have to be easier/more efficient ways of making a publication, but we are limited by what we have. Hopefully that will improve next year when the school (tentatively) goes 1-to-1 where every student has a device, most often a laptop.

This week is Homecoming week, so I will be sure to post some pictures of the various dress up days. I'm planning to participate in at least 3, maybe 4 :)