First Day of School / First Day Off from School

[dawn_felagund]

Today was supposed to be the first day of the actual school year. It was staff-only; the darlings are supposed to come back tomorrow. However, schools were closed today and tomorrow due to persistent power outages after Irene. (Baltimore Gas & Electric is now telling some people it may take two weeks to get their power restored. Ouch.) I think

Comments

[heartofoshun]

I'm sorry, but with all due respect, you do sound like Hermione. I used to do my lesson plans on the city bus, one of the reasons I used to turn down offers of rides.

I am with you on souping up the required material with background information, graphics, slides, what I could find, presented in an interesting manner. It worked liked magic for me with younger kids; no reason it should not work for you. Plus, it gave me the opportunity to use a little creativity, which in turn engaged me and made me a nicer person to have in the classroom.

[dawn_felagund]

LMAO! When I first started working with my mentor, I told her that Bobby had nicknamed me Hermione, and she kind of laughed it off, but within about a week of actually working with me, was using it as well

[heartofoshun]

Everything that varies from the one teacher droning on without visual aids helps to keep their attention and varying those also. These kids are NOT Hermionie as you well know. Monty Python ought to be fun.

"multiple learning styles and modalities"

Oh, wow! The vocabulary for talking about teaching always cracked me up.

[dawn_felagund]

I taught summer session without any means to use visuals except for those that I drew/wrote on the board--not even an old-school overhead projector! That was misery. Most of my students have the attention span of a flea on amphetamine; listening to me drone on was utterly ineffective, so I ended up putting their notes on handouts, which they also didn't read ... so yeah, I'm all for the visuals! :D

The vocabulary for talking about teaching always cracked me up.

"Let's make up a big word for something that is common sense if you have half a clue about how people think"--that's eduspeak! I mean, wot?? People have different talents, like some prefer to write and some prefer to draw and some prefer to speak out loud? Did you know that??

[indy1776]

Baltimore Gas & Electric is now telling some people it may take two weeks to get their power restored.

I'm not surprised. It took a month for classes to start at my sister's university after Ivan hit. (And it's one of the reasons why I will always have a gas water heater. Hot showers make things like power outages more bearable.)

I think history of English should be included, too. (I actually think we covered it a bit in mine-- my teacher brought in a recording of Beowulf in OE and we listened to the first few lines.)

Good luck with the tech issues!

I'll respond to your email tomorrow, when I'm actually awake.

[engarian]

When I was teaching, I was always about two classes ahead of the students. Not that I didn't know the material, but I wasn't that great at the formal stuff. One good reason why I don't teach any more :-)

- Erulisse (one L)

[dawn_felagund]

I like to be ahead simply because one never knows what will happen: something as mundane as feeling really tired one evening to coming home to find that the dog has been violently ill all over the house and we have to eat out because the house smells so bad (which happened when I was student teaching).

[engarian]

I do agree, but things were a bit different in college. We had a lot more freedom in our curricula, for one thing. I never had the patience to teach at an undergrad level :-)

- Erulisse (one L)
and I got totally burned out on teaching within 10 years.

[ellynn_ithilwen]

Good luck in the new school year! ;)

[dawn_felagund]

Thank you! :)

[ssotknapsack]

Two weeks? Wow. I had heard they were doing pretty well at restoring power, but that makes me question my source (she was all, "Great job, BGE!" on FB, which makes me think she got *her* power back).

(My laptop's sound card is busted. Does that mean that the projector won't make sound either, if it's showing something from the laptop? I have no idea how these things work.)

If it's truly your sound card that's busted, you won't have any sound output. If it's something related, like busted speakers, you will. You can test this by plugging in headphones. These go directly into the sound card, so if they don't work, it doesn't work.

You may just need to update your sound card drivers. There are other things you can check too, but let's start there. :)

[dawn_felagund]

she was all, "Great job, BGE!" on FB, which makes me think she got *her* power back

Prolly. While I'd thank the individual workers any day, it'd be a cold day in Hades before I'd praise the company!

I'm not sure what's up with ol' Pengolodh (my old Dell). He hasn't had sound capabilities for many years now. I'll try the headphone thing. When I make a mistake, he boops audibly at me.

I have no idea how to update sound card drivers either, but there's probably an eHow article for that, eh? ;)