little things

This morning staff had to be at school by 7:00am to devotional. This was a really cool experience. I am blessed to be experiencing what it is like to work with a faith-based organization. It is encouraging to work with people who believe and live out their lives according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. During devotionals, we sang a couple songs together and then we read a passage in the Bible. We all discussed what we thought was significant or encouraging from the content. We prayed and then started the day.
To begin, I had a meeting with the high school teachers. They have a meeting every Friday to discuss any discipline problems going on with students as well as to check the work load they are assigning. They try to make sure that they aren’t all assigning test at the same time and bring up any other necessary. I am glad that they do this because I remember being a student and feeling like everything was due at the same time (although I know sometimes it is unavoidable). After the meeting I went back to the student lounge and printed off my worksheets for Monday’s class. I have 15 9th graders in my class. Two of them are Haitian and don’t speak English well although they are learning quickly. I think another one or two are new students and are having to catch up on English quickly as well. It will be a challenge to make sure that my teaching methods as well as assessments are meeting the needs of my students and yet still providing them with comprehensive information. I also made my grade sheet for the semester and finished filling in my teacher key for the day. I am nervous about fitting all of the content I have planned for Monday into 80 minutes. I only have 60 minutes of activity and lecture but I am not sure how things will go with it being my first time teaching a unique population.
After lunch, I spent time brainstorming my Biblical integration for the lesson. This was hard and still don’t know what I am going to do. I don’t have to have a parallel for each lesson but I thought that it would be good to start out with one. I am enjoying the challenging of mixing the Bible into academics and looking at it from a new lens. I might do some reading and researching this weekend to see if I come up with anything else.
Lastly, I started going through the standards, starting at Kindergarten and highlighted each standard depending on if it would fit better into Health or Fitness. This will help me get an idea of how many outside, active classes and units I will need to create compared to inside, lecture/handout classes and units to create. I feel like I am getting more confidence that I can actually accomplish all that writing the curriculum will entail. It is going to be a long detailed job but I think I can do it as long as I take it one small chunk at a time. Sara, who was on maternity leave, is coming back on Sunday so hopefully by the end of next week I can get some time to meet with her and discuss question as well as get guidance. It will be nice to have her as a resource.
The end of the day ended with the activity called “Revolution.” This is basically a fun thing that involves the whole school on Fridays. During the week each teacher nominated a student from their class for the character trait of the week. This week’s was “confidence.” Then all the teachers vote on the list of nominations (they can’t vote on the person they nominated). The winner which is announced at Revolution gets a prize and this week it was a free smoothie from the café. They also play fun games competing between the elementary, middle, and high schools. The students really get into and I think it ends the week on a good note.
But it’s Friday and time to go home!!!