*The Holocaust unit with the transition students was a HUGE hit! They enjoyed the Maus books. The English teacher and I took the kids to hear survivors of the Holocaust and Sundanese genocide at a local synagogue. The kids asked some great questions and were so respectful. It was great!
*I had the students create a Museum of Tolerance for their final assessment for the Holocaust/Genocide unit. Overall, they did OK. They had to create a visual about one of the genocides that have occurred since the Holocaust (Cambodia, Rwanda, etc). The visual had to educate people about their genocide and to also make connections back to the Holocaust.
*The biology teacher on our team is doing a DNA project related to Holocaust survivors so the Holocaust unit has truly become interdisciplinary on every level.
*The behavior of MOST of the transition kids has improved. Some of the students have NOT improved at all. So, we are at the point of just removing them from our classes. It's at the point where the other kids now tell the misbehaving kids to knock it off. It's actually sorta cool to see the kids advocating for themselves.
*My AP European History course was FINALLY approved for next school year. After all the drama with the school committee, they approved it. I had to go into the meeting and defend it . . . can you imagine? I get trained over the summer. I'm excited and scared at the same time. Excited because of the professional challenge of teaching an AP course. Scared because what if I suck? :-)
*Because I will be teaching the AP course, I have to give up the local history course. There is a colleague in my department that wants to teach it so I will pass the torch to her. Our teaching styles are very similar so the kids will still gain the same experience.
*My school is in the middle of the accreditation process. I'm a co-chair of the curriculum committee. Of course the administration waited until the last minute to organize itself. I have some dingbat colleagues on my committee so it makes it hard to be productive. Our committee is supposed to be working with the HS curriculum coordinator during the process. We are really getting some insight of how she doesn't do her job. No one seems to know her job description as it is so the fact that she is in charge of curriculum and won't let our committee access it is ridiculous. For example, she is supposed to print out every single curriculum of every course taught in our building. In three different conservations, she made up three different excuses of why it wasn't printed out or deadlines of when she would print it out for us. We then asked if the curriculum was electronic and to either email it or put it in the shared folder on the server. She won't do it. I emailed her some curriculum I wrote last summer and she NEVER even opened the file (our school email has the ability to not only see when and if the person read the email but when they downloaded the attachment to that email). And, she is not familiar with any of the curriculum in the building. She's a former science teacher so she knows the science stuff. The district created this job for her three years ago since they were cutting dept heads. She makes $87,000 a year and no one knows what this woman does. . . ugh.
*Coaching Junior Olympic volleyball on Sundays. It's been a great experience. I'm learning a lot that will help out our vball program at my school next season.
*Since the new year, I've been trying to lose weight. Eating healthier. More exercise. So far it's working! I turn 40 next year and I would like to be healthy again regarding my weight.
So, there is so much going on right now at school and in my personal life (don't want to write about it on here).
Overall, things are good and busy.
Only a few more months until the summer break. We can do it teacher peeps!!! :=)
