18.8.06

does your week look like mine?

School starts a week from Monday. Ideally, that would mean the teachers would have a week to get ready, photocopy various handouts, and hang out a bit before the school year starts. Well, that would be the ideal; this is the reality:

Monday--full day inservice (7:45-3:00) (technology)
Tuesday--full day inservice (7:15-3:00) (ELL strategies--this one might be worthwhile)
Wednesday--morning breakfast with staff--not released to rooms until 11am.
Wednesday 12:45-3pm inservice (on new adoption of textbooks)
Thursday--morning is filled with village/grade level meetings afternoon is dept meetings and "time in classroom"
Friday--time in classroom.

So yes, I have a week. But really, I have a day and a half. Of course, I've been in there since the 1st of August so that I can use the time next week to figure out seating charts and etc.

Now, I love getting ready for school (as I'm sure is clear from my previous posts), but I don't like sitting in meetings all day. Especially the sort that are lecture oriented with little time to talk to my colleagues. I have to wonder if there isn't a better way to help us learn from each other. Perhaps it wouldn't be as efficient as having everyone in the auditorium at the same time, but we might just learn something and get a few things done--and wouldn't that be a great start for the school year?