I'm getting an unusual opportunity as a teacher. I get to make a relatively fresh start, in the middle of April, just two and a half months before the summer vacation. Since I've just come back from a longer-than-usual maternity leave, all the teachers who I help with their planning (social studies teachers, Grades 2 through 6), have had a break from the dragon breathing over their shoulders. So I can take all the concerns I had been developing at the beginning of the year, and attack them as if the year were just beginning. The teachers, meanwhile, are already in the swing of teaching, so the hiccups that go with the year's beginning are out of the way. I've asked them all to identify one thing they'd like to improve in their teaching. I intend to identify one thing I think they should work on, as well. Two goals should be plenty for now. The trick is picking an appropriate goal. Something that will fit into Vygotsky's zone of proximal development , something t...
So I have all these ideas that I'm trying to hold in my head simultaneously, but they're all linked with each other, so when I develop one of them, the others automatically shift position, and I'm left in completely uncharted territory, every nanosecond or so. What's the big deal, you ask? Well, here goes. My work as a teacher has different facets. I teach courses in two completely different subjects, and I coach debate teams. Plus I have to organize student participation in various extra curricular activities. So there's a fair bit of mental juggling to do on a day to day basis. THEN there's the fact that I have the mixed blessing of being interested in just about everything under the sun, and the connections between all those things. So there's a desire to look at educational policy at the national level, changes in thinking about education in the world of academia, changes in the world of teachers, the role of private schools in 'public' education...