Fabulous Fall Break

Toast playing at the dog park. Gorgeous Sacramento sunset behind.

     This past week I have been home from work. It was a scheduled fall break where the kids don’t have to be in session all week and neither do the teachers. I have other stuff to do like plan, examine data, and correct papers, but I haven’t really been working too hard. I am taking it easy and taking care of myself. 

       The last two weeks were insane before fall break. I was always one step behind and quickly getting burned out. My teaching was a little bad, but in the end I think my efforts went to a more extraordinary cause. Basically, in order for classes to be eligible college prep classes for Cal States and UCs, the UC system needs to approve them as rigorous enough. In order to do this the schools (usually districts) have curriculum developers write these reports that outline the entire curriculum for an individual class. This report gives a brief purpose for the class, a large course outline that includes the units taught, the skills learned, books read, essential, guiding questions and key assignments. Then, the writing assignments, unit-by-unit, need to be described, as well as the listening and speaking assignments, unit-by-unit.   

      It is a lot of work and some stuff is redundant but these course descriptions need to be done. Each school gets two chances to get courses approved. First, you can send in a course description and if it is approved, it’s all good, but if it is not approved it is sent back to the school with some comments and then the school has 10 days to rewrite the course descriptions and send them back. I was working with some colleagues a few weeks ago I noticed them working hard on these and I laughed a little bit not really understanding how important these descriptions are. Anyway, since I am the only English teacher at the high school level, I offered to help out with the English courses, if they had not been approved already. A few days later the school was sent the first of the English courses back. Not Approved. I was called into the office of the college/guidance counselor and asked if I was still willing to help. Being as helpful as I am, I said, “Sure. This will be fun.” 

        I was given a sub for a day as I delved deeply into the format that was required. I worked on the weekend and clocked about 14 hours. I finished the first one. There were 3 more. I was given a sub for two more days so I could work on them during school hours, but I still had to clock another 14 hours the following weekend. That was the weekend before last. Needless to say I was behind on my standard prep; going day-to-day, but once I turned in that last one I was super excited. I really appreciate the experience. I wrote about 35,000 words (about 85 pages or so) in 10 days and really got some insight into the Common Core standards since the format required the descriptions be based on the Common Core skills. I found that I really enjoyed writing and planning these massive reports, so this may be something I pursue in the future. Anywho, now I can only hope that they get approved. 

         So far this break, we went to Santa Rosa Harvest Festival this last weekend and stocked up our wine cabinet. We also saw our first live symphony with this phenomenal violin player.  A straight virtuoso! Also, we spent some quality time with Chelsea’s grandparents. Then we came home. I re-organized my classroom, graded a few papers (with many more to go), went to gym (with horrible chest aching side effects; I could barely sleep last night because of chest pains.), I’ve cleaned the house, took Toast to the dog park, finished a few books I need to read for school, saw an early private screening of a documentary about an undocumented alien called “Documented” and even wrote a little bit. And it’s only Wednesday!    

Walking around Spring Lake in Santa Rosa with the Grandparents. It was a perfect fall day.

     I am about to finish grading, plan for next week, and then spend the weekend in Oxnard for my Mom’s 60^th Birthday! We are going to her 60s themed party and then hopefully see my brothers new band play! Then back to the grind. But I promise to take things one at a time and relax before then!

Random Pic: My new classroom set up. They are in pairs instead of fours.