Quick Update

Hello all,

Well, the year is just flying by for me, as I am sure it is for all of you as well! I cannot believe we are just 2 weeks from Thanksgiving break.

I feel that my planning and instruction have been very disorganized this year... my alignment is just not quite fitting correctly. Not enough for my taste, anyway. I wonder if this is a 1st year thing, or maybe my stuff never aligned last year either?? Anyway, I need to be more dedicated to making sure that I properly backward design. I wonder if because I work in a private school without any "official" standards that I tend to forgo the traditional "start with the standards" technique I was taught and used (rather effectively, I thought) last year.

I am loving my kids though. I feel like I'm making deeper personal connections every day with them, which is so exciting for me. I'm connecting much more than I did last year during student teaching; maybe because I have my own classroom, and I started from the beginning? Maybe because I'm so much younger than all of the other teachers at school? Who knows. I've also been getting lots of compliments by different faculty members saying that their students rave about my class. Again, is this because I'm a new teacher? Or because my class is run rather openly without extreme structure that these kids are used to? Or because I'm actually challenging them academically? Who knows.

I don't miss MAC, but I do miss the people and the professors. I'm feeling nostalgic lately...