Middle School

Who would have thought I of all people would end up teaching middle schoolers?! I can tell you it's just as shocking to me! The past week since I've been moved up to grades 7&8 I have spent the majority of my time making unit plans and familiarizing myself with the textbooks and workbooks. The middle school staff here at Dover are so accommodating and helpful whenever I have questions (which is frequently).

I have also been spending some time decorating my classroom which I share with the French teacher. There is a big emphasis on displaying students' work, so my decorations are rather minimal until I actually have students! It's been fun wandering around the school seeing what all the other teachers have done with their rooms.

panorama of my classroom pre-decor

desk!

There are two sections of grade 7 (7A and 7B) and two sections of grade 8 (8A and 8B). Each section meets 6 times per week, which brings my total course load to 24 classes per week. This is a heavy load here in Egypt as most of the other middle school teachers are sitting at around 18 or 20 classes per week. Go big or go home, right?! I have all my unit planning done (at least a skeleton) for the first semester which runs until the end of January. I'm still working on creating handouts and such, but Dover emphasizing using the practice workbooks more than anything else. Parents in Egypt tend to think that the more homework/worksheets, the better the learning. I of course know this is not necessarily the case, so I plan to create as much supplemental material as I can over the next couple of weeks.

Overall I'm looking forward to having students arrive on September 3rd. Today is parent orientation day, which is more nerve-wracking than I thought it would be.

Happy Tuesday friends!