1st day improvement and raising of stakes

No sooner than the day after I began the plan to improve my teaching I had the biggest day of the school year thus far. We had a mock School quality review which will prepare us for our real sqr later this year. This meant I had to type up lesson plans, unit plans, and a bunch of other crap and of course be able to ask questions about it incase these visitors came in my room asking a whole bunch of questions. Immediately after this we had parent teacher night til 8. Not stressful or intimidating at all.

I spent all of that night preparing, first at school until I got kicked out, then at the columbia university library, then at home on my laptop. I wrote, what I thought was a kick ass lesson plan and a worksheet that needed a couple tweeks before I came to school. Also when I came to school I had to do a good deal of finishing-touch-putting on my classroom which took up all of my prep period that day. Once I started teaching it was worth it. It was actually really weird to have all of that preparation while I was teaching and it really made a difference.

I've decided that I'm going to try and do that much preparation for all my lessons from here on in, even though it seems kind of lame. I am also reading this book teaching with love and logic which is giving me ideas for classroom management. it would seem that success was at my finger tips.

After meeting with parents our union rep came to me and told me he had to speak with me privately. He said my principal had planned to sit down and talk with me this week and ask me to leave. Him and I both know this is bunk. They tried this with our old art teacher last year and he stayed because the union contract doesn't really give administration the right to fire teachers. So the union rep told me that I have an observation coming up and they will try to give me a U (a rating so bad it makes you un-hireable) or if I agree to leave they will give me an S.

That of course implies that I'm not going to rock this observation with enough of a punch to let them give me one more year, which is the plan. Obviously this is not an enviable situation for me, but it is the situation I'm in. More of a wake up call than death sentence though, I am sure they have really underestimated my teaching ability and my will. Stay posted.

P.S. I might start putting my lessons up here with a box.net widget cause, well, why not.