(Originally posted 9/15/10)

So it’s Day 5 in my room. This year I am teaching Levels 2,3 and 4. (The nomenclature is a bit deceiving; Level 2 students are in HS Level 2, which is actually their 3rd full year of study) My student teacher and I feel like we should be “going somewhere.” You see, we had a weekly plan.

Then that weekly plan was broken down into daily plans.

Every single day we have had to move things (that didn’t get done) to another day. The “things we haven’t gotten to yet” list seems to be getting longer …and longer…and longer…. So I really had to sit down this afternoon to see where we are…and where we ARE going. Normally this doesn’t bother me much. But this is a new curriculum for me (Levels 2/3) so I don’t have my bearings yet.

Besides, my student teacher has a supervisor to report to who does not have a lot of experience with CI-based classes…so I want to be able to “translate” our curriculum to him.

It’s a bit ironic…only 5 days in and it feels like we should have gone farther. :o) At best we’ve only had 3 1⁄2 hours of contact time. From that we can deduct time for attendance, transitions, setting up the seating chart, discussion the course expectations, a fire drill, phone calls from the office, morning announcements etc. etc. etc. An optimistic estimate would be that we’ve had 2 1⁄2 hours of instructional time. From that we can deduct time to give directions, pass out and return papers, give a short “quiz”, clarify answers, check for materials, etc. etc. etc. Now we are down to about 2 hours of interaction in the TL. Total.

When I went back over our weekly plan, I looked carefully at what we have been doing. In that time we have discussed the situation of the miners in Chile, explored what students did over the weekend, read an “email’ from a “former student” who went to the VMAs in LA, sang a goofy song with IR in the past tense, started to dig deeply into the song Aqui Estoy Yo (Luis Fonsi, David Bisbal, Neil Sedaris and Alex Syntek), revisited a few of our favorites from Sr. Wooly, and spent some time getting to know each other via introduction letters and conversation.

Wow.

Why on earth then does it feel like we haven’t “gone” anywhere!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think, and I could be wrong, so I’ll be paying attention to this as the year goes on……that it doesn’t “feel” like a lot because we have worked hard to connect all of the activities. The structures used to discuss the weekend were the same ones that we used to understand and talk about the Video Music Awards. Several of them came from the song, and we used other phrases from the song to take attendance (Aqui estoy yo..es obvio!) Structures connect activities to each other and allow students to connect their thoughts and emotions to the activities themselves. When the students connect with the activities, they begin to connect with each other. Time flies. It “feels” like we haven’t “done” anything.

We have physical evidence that a lot has been done: papers, powerpoints, stories, letters, even a couple of grades in the gradebook. Yet, apparently, none of it felt like “work.” If it did, we’d feel more productive. I’m glad I sat down to take a look at it. I feel much better now.

with love,
Laurie

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