First Night Class

Tonight will mark my first time teaching a night class at UND.  I was contacted last spring to teach an Intro to Education course.  I jumped at the chance.  Next to writing and "Young Goodman Brown," the topic I know most about and am most passionate about, it's education reform and history.  I could listen to and talk about and discuss that stuff all day.

I'm still freaking out, though, with everything that's going on.  Not only is my room at LHS in shambles, but we have no air conditioning.  Worse, our new windows do not open.  Worse still, we have some of the hottest weather of the summer.  Even worse, we have open house tomorrow afternoon.  That means almost zero time to get my room in order.

In fact, I spent about 20 minutes in it total yesterday.  It was just too hot and miserable.

Luckily, our principal doesn't expect us to have our rooms totally ready to go tomorrow afternoon.  If that was the case, I would have to spend the rest of the night once I get home from Grand Forks unpacking and getting my room ready.

As it stands, I plan to spend most of Monday in LHS doing just that.

Oh by the way, did I mention we're also going 1:1, welcoming 2 new English teachers (both of whom I am fortunate enough to be mentoring), instituting a new home room and college/career readiness program, and learning a new attendance and grade system.

That is about a decade worth of stuff right there.  On top of that, I start a night class at UND!  And as an adjunct, I'm not even on the totem pole, so I can't even say I'm low on the totem pole!  That means I learn at the last second about all the logistics - such as what I need to do to get into the UND website as a faculty member, where to get my keys, and when to get my ID.

I just have to take a deep breath and remember my wife is amazing and beautiful.  My kids are healthy and pure joy for me.  I am getting in shape and healthier than I have been in quite some time.  So things just have to be kept in perspective.

BTW - here is cool site that I toyed with this summer.  It's called Storify.  I can't wait to use this in my 1:1 environment with my kids.

Here's how I'm using it for the first homework assignment at UND.