Saturday, September 25, 2010

Back to School

I'm settling into the routine of a new school year. School starts 20 minutes earlier this year (7:40 am) - ouch! Mornings are hectic.

I only teach 1 class every day, first period. Juniors and seniors - Oregon Lit Past. One of my favorite courses to teach, but I haven't taught it for a couple of years, so lesson planning is a bit more of a scramble this year.

After first period, I switch from my "teacher hat" to my "literacy coach hat." I track literacy data for the whole school (2200 students), identify students that need reading or writing interventions, help teachers with how to improve the ways they teach reading and writing in all kinds of classrooms (science, construction, sewing, health, social studies, you name it). I help develop curriculum for intervention programs, provide support to the Special Education / English teachers, and I prepare lots of training sessions for in-service days. Every day is different.

Last week I sorted through all 550+ seniors to see if they were on track for graduation. In addition to requiring credits, we require that students pass the state reading/writing/math tests, or have work samples to demonstrate that they can do those skills. Lots of data sorting to get all that info pulled together. I work with another teacher, who wears a "math coach hat" half the day. Last year she and I tracked all this information on an Excel spreadsheet. This year we got brave and did it all with a Google Doc spreadsheet. It's great! We can share the information, and keep track of the kids, without having to send a document back and forth in the email. Now the principal wants us to share the spreadsheet with all the teachers (100 people!) so they can view the info to see what the kids still need to do for graduation. Yikes! That's pretty public. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

This morning Mark and I walked a 10K (6.2 miles) race - The Best Dam Run out in Estacada. Hop over to The Skinny to read all about our fun.

The race course follows the lovely Clackamas River. Here we are at the start line...

...and 1 1/2 hours and 10K later, here we are at the finish line. We had a great time!

1 comment:

Polly @ Pieces by Polly said...

Good luck with the new school year. That is early. Eric doesn't start until 8:20 or so...but some of the kids here have a really long bus ride. I'm sure you'll do a great job with your spreadsheet going "public."