Weekend Update

Well, I can safely say that I am feeling ten times better about teaching and my school.  This past week was the first week of a new marking period, which meant that I got to start all over with one of my classes (9th grade writing) because it's only a 9-week course.  This was not only a relief because my 9th graders last semester were starting to drive me a little CRAZY, but also because I get to start all over and change everything I didn't like about last term to make it better.  I'm also starting with a clean slate as far as paper-grading goes, which is a humongous relief.  

As for my other two 10-grade classes, those are also going better, although I'm also looking forward to a new group of kids for those classes as well.  One of my very patient colleagues helped me with my pacing chart for the second part of the term, which is way ahead of where I was before since I didn't have a pacing chart until near the end of last term and never knew where I was headed next.  

I'm having so much more fun already with the literature we are reading.  First term, we did a Puritan literature unit and a revolutionary literature unit, which would include things like "The Declaration of Independence" and Thomas Paine's "The Crisis."  Puritan literature, although I like it better now that I'm older, is pretty plain by definition.  Revolutionary literature is just plain difficult, and I have to deal with students constantly saying, "This isn't history class - why are we reading this?"  Almost everything we've read up until this past week hasn't really had any sort of plot to follow, and my students were always confused.  I always had to slow things down (which I don't mind at all), and students lost interest quickly, especially in a 96-minute class.  This week, though, had a completely different tone to it.  I introduced the concept of American Romanticism and we read "The Devil and Tom Walker" by Washington Irving (who also wrote "Sleepy Hollow").  Their response to this story was SO much better than to anything we've read so far, and I also enjoyed teaching it more.  Around Halloween I plan to introduce my Poe unit, and then we are reading Julius Caesar, and ending the semester with Realism, which would include authors like Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Jack London, and Kate Chopin.  I really think that the next time around I will try to skip through the really early stuff as quickly as possible instead of dragging it out to make it more fun for both them and me.  I can't wait until next term!