 |
| That's my blog slung over the shoulder. |
A new school year has started. I'm teaching two classes of Algebra 1 and four classes of Pre-Calculus. The problem that has arisen is that I have 173 students. For those of you who are not teachers, let me put it this way: in my past five years teaching I have never had more than 140 students. I usually have 115 to 130 students. This is like teaching another class period. Also, I am used to having my conference period in the middle of the day but now it's the last period of the day.
These two big changes mean that my systems of organization don't work anymore. I can't pile things on my desk and then sort them during my conference & again at the end of the day. I can't do lunch tutorials because this introvert very much needs those 30 minutes of quiet time. Trying to keep track of 173 tests is more complicated. I'm revamping everything.
In a moment I'm going to go to the school to set up my new system for passing back papers, to sort my copies from the first unit of Algebra and Pre-Calculus, and to generally unclutter things. Hopefully this will give me time tomorrow to grade and input grades. I am avoiding doing hand grading so I am taking a page from my husband's book and having students submit their work via a Google Form. Then I have an add-on called Flubaroo that automatically grades it for me. This is saving me literally hours on the weekend. This won't work for tests and quizzes but those are rare enough that it shouldn't be a problem to grade those by hand.
I hope that all of you out there are doing well!
-Clare G. S.
