Week 1, Year 3

We just had the first full week of school for the 2009 school year, and I'm beginning my third year of teaching here.  I'm trying to look forward as much as I look back these days, breaking the habit I was taught in college.  In my first year I was always reflecting back on the efficacy of individual lessons or units or conversations, making mental notes for how to change those individual situations in the future.  In my second year, I was looking back to my first year for lessons on how to make the current year more effective.  That period of time when "it gets easier" remained nebulous and, to be honest, I didn't have much time to think about what it would look like when it came around.

Well, it's here.  These first days were busy, productive, enjoyable, exhausting, and noticeably less nerve wracking.  The night before I met my classes I slept the sleep of the dead, and woke up to a cup of coffee and the paper the next morning.  No thoughts about potential problem students, no fears about making the same mistakes as last year, no butterflies in the stomach, and certainly no rush to get to school for that extra 20 minutes of prep time in the morning.  I simply enjoyed a cuppa joe, looked at the clock, got dressed, and hopped on the bus.

That being said, I know that the easy-breezy feel of today will turn into a tropical storm tomorrow.  But I can actually say that now because I know where the busy times of the year happen around here.  I predict that I will hit the first wall of homework grading in about 4 school days, which will be followed in about three weeks by the first round of essays from my older students.  

For all of the little snaggles that happen in the teaching profession, at least I can say that I'm keeping my eye open for when they happen instead of looking back to how to avoid them completely.  There are thing I can't control, such as the sinking feeling you get when you have that first pile of grading after summer break.  It's the same for everyone who has ever had to go back to work after vacation.  One thing I've learned is that the snaggles for educators come in waves, and they boil down to one problem that is out of my control for the most part here: time.  

My current department assigns each course to one or two teachers, who plan out the major units and objectives for the course and then pass that schedule on to the classroom teachers.  I have been told that the first two weeks of classes should encompass getting-to-know-you style activities that also introduce reading comprehension skills and introduce basic language study and analysis vocabulary.  Then I have to start either a short text unit unit or an extended text unit, depending on the course.  I've been given freedom to choose my texts and method for teaching them, but I still have to limit myself at this point to poetry, short stories, and novels.  No film, media, creative writing or anything else.  Reading comprehension should be woven in because there will be a common test for all classes in week 6.

Here lies the snaggle.  Looking at all 5 of my classes, this first unit will end for all of my classes within a few weeks of one another.  Ending a unit means summative assessment to see what the kids have learned.  Since our department's focus is essay skills (the core of the standardized testing in New Zealand), that means 150 essays to grade within a few weeks time.  That's a big time sink, and since I don't get to design my own courses I can't stagger that work load.  Time, in this case, is not on my side.

My one bit of reflection that I'm allowing myself at this point is to notice large trends: what can I control and shape, and what can I not control.  I can control how I make the writing process easier and more skills-based for my students, teaching baby steps up to the complex writing they'll have to produce at end of year.  I can't control how many final drafts of essays pass across my desk at the end of these units.  I've decided this year to optimise my grading for first drafts of essays, grading only a few paragraphs and then passing them on to the students to finish grading.  This actually worked last year.  It saved me time, halved my grading load, actually, but it also modelled self-assessment skills for the kids.  They can see that I commented on their topic sentences in the first two paragraphs, so they can check their topic sentences for the rest of the essay.

Alas, I still have to use essays as my main form of summative assessment.  Since I can't control this, I'm not going to worry about it.  I'll try to write a little less on student work by making up a shorthand glossary for the kids to have in their notebooks, and using symbols instead of words to mark up their writing.  But I'm not going to loose sleep over taking that extra day to get work back to them.  There's only so many hours in the day, after all, and that's another thing I can't control.

Maybe the "it gets easier" lesson really boils down to self-determination.  Once you stay in a profession long enough you better get at understanding what your job actually entails.  In education, this doesn't always jive with the ideals built up in teacher training programs.  Last year this dissonance caused some headaches for me.  This year, I've had to compare the two (job requirements vs social expectation) and determine what goals I can practically achieve.