A Ho-Hum Week 13

Some weeks are just boring. The classes are mellow. The kiddos do what they're supposed to do. And there just isn't anything interesting to write about. Last week was one of those weeks. So, rather than grasping for another story, I'm going to do a Thursday 13. These are the things that happened last week but wouldn't make it to a blog post normally.

1. I had an even week. The schools are on block schedule, but they're not on the same block schedule. I was at one school on Tuesday/Thursday and a different one on Wednesday/Friday. (Monday was a holiday.) And that just happened to correspond to each school's periods 2, 4, and 6. 

2. And their period 8, but I happened to get four classes with no period 8. Which meant I got to leave early each day. Woo-hoo!

3. It was also an English week. Mostly. On Tuesday I covered a special ed teacher who had two periods of "learning center". (The learning center is a place where students can go to get extra help.)

4. Tuesday's special ed teacher co-taught one period (on even days) with the teacher I covered on Thursday. (On odd days she co-taught the whole day with that same teacher.) 

5. The learning center just so happens to be located in a room that is between two of the classes I covered the week before. I heard the Spanish teacher showing the same videos I showed her classes the previous Friday. 

6. Tuesday's English assignment (for seventh graders) was standardized testing. It's a test I've given various classes when I was on various long term assignments (I've given it at least five times now), so I knew the drill. As it was a co-taught class, the other teacher took care of it, really. I just assisted.

7. On Wednesday I had eleventh and twelfth graders. That teacher always leaves a bunch of independent work when she's out, and they generally have enough to keep them busy.

8. The eleventh graders started reading The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. They were supposed to read a couple chapters and then there was some activity that went along with what they read.

9. On Thursday I got to revisit the sixth period from Tuesday, this time with the special ed co-teacher leading the class.

10. The other two classes were advanced seventh grade, and I had their slides for writing an argumentative essay. They learned four terms: claim, supporting argument, counter claim, and rebuttal. (The co-taught class did the same thing, only slower.) 

11. Friday's ninth graders were writing a reflection (they just did an oral presentation on various colleges) in MLA format. I did a whole lecture on MLA format to ninth graders in the vacant English class I began the school year in.

12. On Friday I also had one period of twelfth grade AP. They were doing an assignment that went along with the book they're currently reading: Jane Eyre. 

13. The picture at the start of this post is from Friday's classroom. I had covered the same group back in October. It was the class that finally stuck on October 5th, that day that all the jobs I took kept getting cancelled. (Although, that was an odd day, so I had a different configuration of classes.)