Timing is everything

One of the things that was a challenge for me when I was in "teacher school" was timing. How much time should a particular activity take? How many different activities can I fit into a given class period? Our school is on a block schedule, so that means that over a two day period, you will see each one of your classes twice, except for one class that is an "embedded" period, which means you see them for less time every day. For example, on one day (Green days, here) I would teach 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th. 1st, 3rd, and 5th periods are each approximately 90 minutes. 7th period is 50 minutes. Then on the second day (blue days), I would teach 2nd, 4th, 6th, and then see 7th again. Actually, I don't teach all of those periods, each day I have one period that is set aside for planning, contacting parents, meetings, and whatever else I might want to get done (Cough cough, like writing in my blog, cough cough). But the planning period is a story for another day.

Anyway, I was talking about timing your instruction. During my student teaching, on the day I was being observed by my university supervisor (basically, the person giving me the grade for that course), I stuck to my plan's times, which were WAAAAAAY off, and ended up with about 45 extra minutes. So we did the last activity for 45 verrrrry long minutes. Those were some of the longest minutes of my life, I gotta say. Anyway, since then I've always made sure that I have extra stuff planned so that doesn't happen. In fact, more often than not, I have so much planned for each 90 minute block of time that I'm often pushing one activity into the next block. So you can see that timing is still an issue for me.

Today was a strange schedule to begin with. We had a three hour delayed opening - instead of students reporting to school at 7:30, they came at 11am, and we had mini parent conferences. Basically we sat in the gym at tables all around the outer edge of the gym, and parents could come up to us and talk to us for five minutes about their individual student and how they were doing in our class. After that activity, we had 6th period, and now we're in the middle of my 4th period (planning, see above). For the students it was almost like a half day in reverse. In fact, no almost like, that's exactly what it was. I teach AP Psychology to 2nd and 6th period, but there was no 2nd period today, so I didn't want my 6th period to get ahead of 2nd period, so what I did was plan a lesson where students could be in essay workshop groups with their peers and they could work on their essays.

They were done with nearly 40 minutes to spare at the end of the period.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A. Hasn't happened to me in seven years
B. I didn't really have anything else for them to work on, and I didn't want to move into the next unit.
C. I hate being one of those teachers who just show movies to kids when they're too lazy to come up with a plan. It's not good teaching, and that's not who I am as a teacher.

But D. That's what I had to do (only I wasn't lazy, it's not laziness, it's much worse, it's poor planning on my part).

I had an old NOVA program: Brain Transplant that I whipped out of my cabinet and showed the kids for the remainder of the period. I was embarrassed and angry with myself. On the plus side, there was a ton of good information in the video, and I am now considering finding time to show the portion that I just showed to 6th period to my 2nd period, especially before I show them Awakenings (which is an excellent film, by the way), because it explains several concepts that are in that movie quite well. And I suppose in the end it was worthwhile because it talks about L-DOPA, and Parkinson's disease, etc., etc., etc., but it still doesn't change the fact that I was caught with my pants down.

Well, not literally. That would get me fired. But you get the point. And that's the note that I'm leaving with for the weekend. Yay. Talk about feeling like Worse Teacher Ever.