Paul's Infrequently Updated Blog

Today marked the end of  of the third quarter and tomorrow is a Work Day for the teachers. Again, I have made sure that my grades are complete so all I will have to do tomorrow is get them verified and then I am done. This weekend will also be the start of our Spring Break.

For some reason, Gering Public Schools does not combine Spring Break with Easter. As a result, we get two long weekends. This year, one is in March while the second will be in April. I am afraid I find this a little bizarre to say the least. Almost every other school district gives their students (and staff) a full week in either March or April (depending when Easter falls) for Spring Break. This gives people the opportunity to go on vacation or just stay home to get ready for the last part of the school year.

The problem I see with dividing the time off like they do at Gering is that a lot of kids get pulled out of school anyway, thus missing up to four days of school. The argument has been made that giving them a whole week in the Spring would allow them to forget what they have spent most of the year learning. I don’t buy this argument. If that was so, then you can make a much stronger case for getting rid of the long summer vacation (as some people do). I don’t think taking a whole week in March or April will make much, if any, difference to how much learning the kids retain.

Once again, it does not really matter what I think. Each and every year, teachers are asked what they think of the next year’s school calendar and each and every year our suggestions and ideas are ignored.

On Wednesday, there was a meeting for Probationary Teachers that was organized by our Union, the Gering Educators Association. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the rights of non-tenured teachers. The meeting was held at a local pizza place so I got the opportunity to eat free pizza and learn more about my rights and responsibilities as a teacher.

When I got there, I found there I found that the turn out was pretty low. We had another snowstorm on the day of the meeting  and the roads are still pretty bad. In the end, only three other teachers turned up. I was still a little  surprised because, despite the conditions, I thought more people would show. I found the meeting very informative and I got the business card of the regional union rep for the Nebraska Education Association or NEA, the state union to which our local union is affiliated. So if I have any serious problems in the future I know who I can contact.

Also, we had another faculty meeting on Wednesday. Not surprisingly, the ESU #13 Winter Conference workshops came up. I could hardly believe it when one of my fellow teachers said how great the “Energizer” was with his presentation. When she started talk about the great things she had learned that she would use in the classroom, I was started to wonder if I had even been in the same workshop. I still say that workshop was dreadful and that the presenter only wanted to sell us his products.

Today was the annual ESU #13 Winter Conference. ESU stands for Educational Services Unit and the one that covers the Panhandle of Nebraska was the 13th to be established in the state.

Every February, they hold numerous workshops for teachers and other educational professionals in the Gering/Scottsbluff area to support our “professional development.” Every December, we get asked which of these workshops would we like to attend and, unfortunately, this year I forgot to tell my Principal my preference, so he put me in what he thought would be the best workshop for  me.

Until this year, all we had to do was fill out a sheet telling the administration what workshop we wanted to go on, but, this year, we had to go see the Principal and “request” the workshop of our choice. I say request because several teachers told me that when they went to the office with their requested workshop the Principal insisted on them attending something else instead.

So I go to the workshop at the Gering Civic Center to see what the presenter, Carl “Energizer” Olsen, has to say. Anyone who decides to use the term “Energizer” as a nickname immediately raises a red flag for me. Sure enough this guy did not fail to disappoint.

Almost from the beginning, I got the feeling he was trying to sell me something from the collection of products he had set out on tables in the room. He also spent much of his presentation demonstrating his products claiming they could be used in the classroom to attract and maintain students’ attention.

I had several issues with the “Energizer.” First off, I found his presentation to be dull. I find most workshops to be dull so, to be honest, it may well be just me and I will try not to hold that against him. The next issue concerned where he spent most of his career in public education. For most of his time in education, he was a Middle School Guidance Councilor and, while that means he would have had regular contact with students, it also means that he had little to no experience of actually teaching and managing a classroom. I do not like people who have had no real experience of teaching in a high school setting telling me the best ways of how to teach.

The other issue I had with the “Energizer” is that a lot of his products would not be used safely in a classroom. Some of his products create magic tricks and one involved the use of fire. I can just imagine the trouble a teacher would get into if they used such things at our school.

The final issue involved the afternoon break. The main reason for taking this break was not so we could stretch our legs and maybe grab some coffee, but so that the “Enerqizer” could try and sell some of his products to the people present.

At the end of the day, I asked one of my Social Studies colleagues what he thought of the presentation and he said that it had been one of the worst in his 25 years of teaching. I think that pretty much says it all.

Today was the first day back at school after the Christmas break. There were no students today, just teachers and staff getting ready for the new semester. I did not really have all that much to do today. I made sure I had all my work done before I went on Christmas break. I did have to check and verify my grades with the school’s registrar, but after that I pretty much had the day to myself.

This semester things should be a little easier. Because the I.R. class is only a semester long, I have already taught one semester which means at least for the first two units I already have the material ready to teach the class. As I get into the second half, I will have to spend more time planning and creating materials because I did not get to teach that stuff the first semester. I still think everything will be okay and, by next school year, I will be all set.

When I got home today, I got greeted by D’Argo. He was outside and came to the front to come see me. We ended up going in the house together. On Saturday, he will be going to the Vets again for his rabies booster shot. He does need this because I have seen him recently playing with some of the other local kitties. I want to make sure he is protected from any diseases they might be carrying.

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!