First five weeks DONE!

Well, I can breathe a sigh of relief....*HUGE SIGH*.  Today I finished the first unit for my sophomores in the first term...it's going to last five weeks!  

This was so not what I was planning to do today.  I wanted to get up early, organize some boxes upstairs, get a move on the remodel.  But after sleeping in and taking forever to get showered and looking at the temperature and noticing it was over 100 degrees, I thought that I could just forget going upstairs.  So I sat down at the computer and just sort of began doing a little thinking...and it somehow turned into five weeks!

Okay, that's not entirely truthful.  I started for an hour planning some things for a new unit that I'd never done before.  But after the first hour of gathering, I got a little discouraged.  And a lot lazy.  And I just decided to recycle one of the units I already had from last semester into the first semester of this year.  That's the nice thing about being on a modified block schedule...you can recycle semester stuff.  The only problem is that I teach this same thing second semester as well, so if I have any repeaters in class, they'll get the same material twice unless I come up with something different.  Which wouldn't be a big deal if it's just one or two kids, but let me tell you, if they're repeating, there's usually a reason (like they can't put their butts in their chairs and listen).  So it is kind of nice to keep their attention.

But I figure that's all the way after Spring Break, so I've got LOADS of time to worry about that.  And in the mean time, I get to learn even more about Kennedy!  Hurray!

So really the whole process was just a bunch of rearranging and dropping into place, making that material work with this school year's schedule and days off, etc.  I also had to add in new things like introducing the syllabus, going to the library, and other stuff that I didn't have written into the plans last year.  

I think it turned out a-okay.  I think the total process (including the hour of working on something else before quitting) took about four hours.  That's the fastest I ever planned anything!

And now that's a huge load off my chest...just have to go make copies and I do NOT have to worry about the sophomores!  Teaching the first term of the freshmen, though...well that's a different story.

And a whole other day or two of planning!