Three Weeks? Just three weeks?

Someone said to me yesterday, "I bet you dread going back to school." NO, I am extremely excited about going back to school. BUT, I am beginning to feel a bit frantic about all the projects I need to complete before then.

In the summer I love taking my kids to the pool, biking around the neighborhood, reading novels, camping at the beach. I am thankful, though, that our family schedule also allows me a few uninterrupted hours of schoolwork most days. Since my kids adjust their summer schedule to maximize time with Dad, they don't usually go to sleep until he does at 10:30 or 11:30 pm. Then they sleep in until 9:00 or 10:00 am, and I have three or four hours for schoolwork.

As a teacher, the summer is my most creative work time. Next year I will teach American Lit for the first time in 11 years. I began the summer with no plan, but I will have mapped out the entire school year for this class before August 20th. Will we go chronologically or thematically? What novels are available for my students to use? How much of the textbook will I use? What online resources are worthy of our attention? How much collaboration can the American History teacher stand? How will school-wide PBLs affect my curriculum and our schedule? I am creating a new curriculum from almost nothing, and the sheer creativity involved tingles my brain.

Sometimes I can't make myself sleep until 6:00 am. Sometimes I have get up at 5:00. Sometimes it's 4:30, and I will myself back to sleep.

I am also trying to assemble a coursepack/textbook for Survivor, our study skills PLUS class for ninth graders. Most of the textbook is just a compilation of resources we use regularly in SILSA, but there are a few pages that require me to write a few paragraphs. I am sure this will be a very helpful tool when it is finished, but I this work is dragging for me a bit.

Much of this summer has been spent thinking about how I can be more successful with integrating technology into my classes. There are so many possibilities to consider. I would like to have my students working online as much as possible. At the district level, we are still trying to determine which resources are the best fit for our schools and our students. Of course I would prefer to know sooner rather than later. I would like to be able to set up the groups before school starts. I would like to use the tools myself before I need to teach my students how to use them.

We finished our WNC IMPACT workshop on Thursday by presenting our implementation and evaluation plans to the group. I was very pleased by how much we had accomplished in the two and a half days. In the coming year we will focus on using instructional technology to build our professional community and to help our students grow as learners. The SILSA faculty will use technology tools for our own work, so that we can become more knowledgeable, proficient and efficient. We will also use the technology in our classrooms with our students. We made some specific plans for this work and determined how we would measure whether or not it had been done.

We will present all of our summer work to the rest of the faculty at our SILSA Faculty Retreat beginning on August 11th. I have three weeks to finish several projects. Just three weeks?