Restart

Tomorrow begins the second semester. Let's all stop for a moment to think about how quickly the years fly by.

Wow.

It's a short week for me, as we had today off for the holiday and Friday is an in-service day. The thing is, shhhhh, don't tell, this is the first week I will have done any amount of direct instruction in quite some time.

Weird, huh?

My students were working in literature circles before Christmas, and I rarely addressed the whole class--I mostly circulated the room to check in on groups and *watched* them read quite a bit. Riveting. Oh, the last few days I was very ornery as I tried to force students into turning in work. Tiring, but not direct teaching. I did have a discussion/wrap-up day planned, but the snow day pushed us to rush to finish before the break.

After the break, the students worked on a little project and then did oral presentation. Afterward, the students spent two days doing some review for the semester exam, and that didn't involve me yammering on about what would be on the test. It involved them reviewing and practicing skills for the exam.

And then three days of exams. That was three days of processing grades for me!

Finally, tomorrow and the rest of the week, I teach. Only tomorrow needs to be somewhat flexible as I am going to try to stream the inaugural speech--me and a gazillion other people in the district--and then find a good recording of it for the classes afterward if needed. I say if needed because many, but not all, of the teachers are talking about trying streaming the inauguration, too. Our Internet connection has been, at times, reminiscent of dial-up days, so the whole event is just up in the air!

In a lot of ways it feels so authentic, though. Each day when I walk into the classroom, I know that things might not go as planned. At least tomorrow I know I have a problem to solve right away, and if I can't do it, I have a firm Plan B. Usually, Plan B is by the seat of my pants!