So I am currently sitting in the middle of a less than stellar education workshop. I will bite my tongue a little, simply because I don't know yet exactly who is going to be reading this. My school sends all of its new teachers to this four day workshop hosted by the New Jersey Association of Independent Schools. The hope is that they will learn what it is to be an independent school teacher; what it is that makes our experience different than other teaching experiences. Instead, we have a topics course that covers a lot of basic elements of teaching blended heartily with impractical educational theory.

I swear to God, this is a direct quote: "I think its funny that we say we cover material, shouldn't we be revealing it?"

In the end I have gleaned some useful tidbits that will help in lesson planning and classroom management, but they amount to maybe an hour's worth of learning, and I have, thus far, sat through close to fifteen hours of boring lecture. There are far better uses of my time.

I talked to Jodie last night about an array of topics, most importantly how critical my attendance is. On Thursday volunteers are going to do small mini-lessons based on what they have learned, and Jodie said that she will turn a blind eye if I were to "disappear" for that day of lecture. The administration isn't keeping tabs on us anyway, and I have much more constructive things I can do.

Jodie has said that we can meet with John Mascaro (Dean of Faculty) to tell him what we think of the workshop. Its not that I am opposed to workshops, its just that there are plenty of other topics that I would love to learn about: technology in the classroom, classroom management, or something in that vein.

I just hate being taken out of a paying job so that I can sit and listen to some guy lecture about getting in touch with student's feelings.

When I was substituting here at Morristown-Beard in the spring, Jodie Miller, the head of the department, came to me and asked me if I could manage teaching in the computer lab, once it was converted to a classroom. This is the general layout.



A few things to note: Those black dots are immovable structural pillars that create a dead space that cannot be taught across. If I put the kids on one side, I must teach on that side as well. Jodie also is moving from one classroom to another and needs a department-head office, so we agreed she could carve up a piece of the room for herself, and we decided upon this plan.



This hinged upon the removal of the tech closet, and the seating arrangement would be cramped for 14 students, but we absolutely had to have 14. Construction comes, headed by the groundskeeper Bob Rivello, and they do very little we asked for.



I suspect that instead of ruffling the feathers of the tech department, he made the decision to leave the tech closet as is. That meant that the door to my room now has to be the door to Jodies room, and he needs to put a door to my room somewhere else. That somewhere else is where the blackboard was supposed to go. When I made this image I had no idea what we were going to do, but Jodie and I have since moved some desks in to see how we could make it work, and we came up with a workable solution: The blackboard is going to go opposite where it was planned, on the East wall. My desk and bookcase will go behind the pillars, and the desks will be in clusters of two on each side of a wide central aisle.

This is all assuming that Bob and the fire inspector don't nix it before school starts. I am also very frustrated with how slow furnishing the room is going. We are now two and a half weeks out from the beginning of school, and there are no desks, not blackboards, no teacher's desk, nothing. Just a new carpet. They haven't even installed a new light switch (the old one is now in Jodie's office).

First Post

I started a LiveJournal in my college years, and over the last few months my posts have been tending almost exclusively towards teaching: how my job is being set up, the problems with my classroom, and curriculum development, so I thought I would move it to a legitimate blog. I have had a good experience with blogger with what Jess and I have been doing with the wedding. With any luck this will actually be read by people, and I will have reasons to post here, but it will be a chronicle of my teaching experience.