Today was the end of the semester at school. We are now on Christmas vacation until January 4th when teachers go back to school and then the students return on the 5th.

Semester has ended okay for me. I managed to get through the first semester of International Relations, although I have discovered that the curriculum that I wrote for it is way too long. At some point, it will have to be cut back. Right now, the I.R. curriculum I wrote is six units long and I only managed to get about two and a half done. Next semester, I plan on speeding things up and also making some cuts to the I.R. curriculum. That way I will be able to cover more of what needs to be covered. I am not too worried about the I.R. because I now know I have plenty to cover and don’t have to worry about running out of things to do. In fact, I actually really have too much material to cover for a semester long course.

The other two classes are doing well. I did manage to get the first two units of World Geography completed. This may not sound like much, but unit one of the World Geography curriculum covers a lot of material. All the other units are much smaller in the second semester if I spend three weeks on units three through seven I would still have about three weeks left to spare at the end of the year. This will not happen so the geography is pretty much taking care of itself.

As for my third class, U.S. History, I have had to speed things up a little this year. I would have liked to have been finished with both the Great Depression and the New Deal by Christmas, but, in the end, I only got done with the Great Depression. This is still a huge improvement on this time last year when I had only just been done with World War One. I guess I can learn from this and, if I teach U.S. History next school year, I can make sure I am done with the New Deal by Christmas.

Now that the Christmas vacation is here I do not have to worry about school for a few weeks. I made sure all my grades were done by today so I don’t have to worry about having to go to school over the Christmas break to work on grades. I think, overall, I am using my time more effectively at school. I now get most of my grading and a lot of my lesson planning done at school. That, of course, means I do not take very much work home or spend very much time working on creating assignments and PowerPoints at home. While some of that is still necessary, I am gradually  reducing the amount of work I have to do at home. If I have the same subjects to teach next year that should mean a lot less work for me since I will already have most of the materials available at hand. I have no doubt I will make some supplementary materials, but the core materials will be already be in place.

I guess I can now look forward to almost two weeks of no school and no school work!