Friday Furlough

GREAT NEWS on the homefront....

This Friday is a furlough day. That is, the state of Maryland is so broke that it gives its school districts unpaid days off. This is okay by me. I will forgo one day of pay for a day during which I can catch up. The weekends are no longer sufficient for getting ahead. They are only sufficient for getting by. For example, I worked 8-10 PM on Friday 10AM- 7PM on Saturday and 8AM-8PM on Sunday and I still am not caught up in life. ( I also, as a side note) went out on Saturday night and fell asleep at a bar) What will you do for that much time and still not be caught up, you ask? Lesson planning and classroom management takes far more time than i could have imagined. It takes about 3 hour for me to plan each daily lesson since it includes a outline of the plan, a powerpoint, a guided note sheet and some sort of guided practice activity. I know I should be using other resources, but even that takes a significant amount of time to find exactly what is needed and adapt it for my purposes. I've found that there is not much research/ lesson plan advice for urban classrooms of 35-40 students. That is, plans which take into account that teachers must purchase all their resources, have limited copies, no laminator and are working with students who will take a 3 second lag time to begin some flagrant act of disobedience. Thus, I (and all other teachers in similar classrooms) must think and plan out every minute of the lesson so that students will not have the opportunity to act up or call out and subsequently take the whole class on their downward spiral of misbehavior. 3 lesson plans per week x 3 hours per plan = 9 hours

Then there's grad school.