{"id":551,"date":"2013-09-28T23:36:05","date_gmt":"2013-09-28T23:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/?p=551"},"modified":"2013-09-28T23:47:35","modified_gmt":"2013-09-28T23:47:35","slug":"as-you-can-tell-from-the-length-of-this-post-its-been-an-interesting-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/2013\/09\/28\/as-you-can-tell-from-the-length-of-this-post-its-been-an-interesting-week\/","title":{"rendered":"As you can tell from the length of this post, it’s been an interesting week"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a week!\u00a0 My son is adjusting back to California life.\u00a0 He\u2019s still not back to his normal sleep patterns.\u00a0 Tomorrow is also his 18th<\/sup> birthday!\u00a0 He\u2019ll be able to vote and get his driver\u2019s license without the student driving requirement.\u00a0 In two months, he\u2019ll be going off to the Air Force.<\/p>\n

Speaking of two months, that\u2019s how long this new long-term contract is.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure it will feel longer!\u00a0 They weren\u2019t kidding when they said that this teacher had no lesson plans.\u00a0 He has no plans at all.\u00a0 From what the kids tell me, he didn\u2019t teach much and he often fell asleep after lunch.\u00a0 The guy turns 80 this year!\u00a0 No wonder he had a heart-attack (that, and \u2013 no kidding \u2013 the man eats butter).\u00a0 I found out that he\u2019s currently in a coma\u2026 and may never come back.\u00a0 I may be here a while.<\/p>\n

The other thing I found out quickly is that his classroom is the absolute furthest thing away from civilization \u2013 it is near nothing of importance.\u00a0 It is about a three minute walk to the nearest bathroom, a five minute walk to the front office and a seven minute walk to the English department where I hope to have most of my lunches (to schmooze).\u00a0 I lost seven pounds this week from walking!<\/p>\n

The students in my classes were not used to working when I arrived.\u00a0 They might have initially been looking forward to an easy A, but they discovered that boredom was worse than hard work.\u00a0 They are ready to work.\u00a0 Though it\u2019s been a slow and painful week for me personally (14 hour days every day this week just to put something together \u2013 remember: three curricula!), and my wife has a cold I\u2019ve been trying my best to avoid, I think the result by the end of the week turned out OK.\u00a0 The department chairs did indeed give me resources to get me going; included in the stack of materials was what the teacher should<\/i> have been teaching for American Government (SDAIE) but clearly was not.\u00a0 I now have a ton of worksheets for two of my three subjects.\u00a0 My third subject is an elective class that this teacher created himself.\u00a0 So far as I know, there is no curriculum for it, so to help me along, I was given the captain of the debate team as a TA instead.<\/p>\n

My TA for Speech is a gem.\u00a0 She has been teaching the majority of the classes this week; and I\u2019m sure that this fact will have the parents up in arms if it continues, but at least for this week, it helped a lot.\u00a0 Little known fact: TA\u2019s originally were <\/i>student teachers, even at the High School level.\u00a0 Some colleges still let TA\u2019s teach (I was such a person), but High Schools typically do not.\u00a0 Starting next week, I\u2019ll begin to teach some of the classes, but not all of them.\u00a0 I have another student in class who was a TA of mine last year and he has expressed an interest in teaching.\u00a0 I think I\u2019ll let him!<\/p>\n

By the end of the first week (yesterday), I had enough curriculum and printed materials for all of next week already.\u00a0 This should allow me to do a semester plan by the end of next week and also build up something proper for Speech classes (the TA wants to start debate soon \u2013 her specialty \u2013 and I want to slow things down and do oratory for a while longer \u2013 my specialty).\u00a0 Since I see little chance of this teacher returning before Christmas (if at all), even though I\u2019m currently scheduled through Thanksgiving, I\u2019m planning curriculum through the end of the semester just in case.\u00a0 If they want me to teach beyond Christmas, they will need to hire me.<\/p>\n

I hope that by Monday, I\u2019ll have my own computer accounts so I can do grades and take roll electronically (so I don\u2019t have to send a student to turn in a roll sheet every period).\u00a0 I\u2019ll also have to get with security and convince them that my temporary staff pass is valid in the staff parking lot.\u00a0 I got a parking violation warning on Friday.\u00a0 Next warning, and I get towed\u2026 except that what I have on my dash is valid according to the front office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a week!\u00a0 My son is adjusting back to California life.\u00a0 He\u2019s still not back to his normal sleep patterns.\u00a0 Tomorrow is also his 18th birthday!\u00a0 He\u2019ll be able to vote and get his driver\u2019s license without the student driving … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":554,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions\/554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}