Books, books, and more books. That was been all I've seen these past two days. Our new curriculum text books arrived - about 300 of them (guessing). So that means unboxing all the new texts (and workbooks, teacher supplies, and technology). It also means packing up all of our old texts to be shipped out. I'll be glad when that is over and I can get down to business again.
Tomorrow is our yearly professional speaker. I always look forward to this day. Last year our speaker was quite good. She shared her experiences growing up in Hawaii and being labeled an 'at risk' child. She urged us to refer to those students as 'at promise" children.
Two years ago we had William Dagget Jr who scared the crap out of me with his education and economic doom and gloom. I bought into it and taught that way most of the year. I shouldn't have. His message was an important one, but thanks to Leon Botstein, I now know that many have the 'sky is falling' syndrom in education. I bought into that and it cast a cloud over much of my year.
Three years ago - I think - we had the best speaker I've heard in quite some time - Jim Trelease - who was excellent and really got me fired up.
So I really look forward to these presentations. I know several who scamper up to the top row in the balcony to snooze or visit. It's a shame. I've said it before many times, how would we react if our students did that? Or if our students didn't try to at least buy into what we were telling them?
No comments:
Post a Comment