The Importance of Being Flexible

To be perfectly honest, this past week was pretty much a waste of time. On Monday, most of the eighth grade went on a field trip to see Math Eureka!, a math play (yes, you read that correctly, a play about math) in Phoenix. I stayed behind with the approximately twenty students who did not attend. We just watched videos, played games, and played outside all day.

Tuesday was one of the few days I could actually teach a legitimate lesson. However, Jodi thought it would be better to show a movie that day for a variety of reasons which are mildly complicated and not really something that should be blogged about.

On Wednesday, about half of my students went on a field trip to see a production of Alice In Wonderland at the high school as a reward for good behavior. We rearranged the students a bit and most of the day they took a math test. The rest of the time we played outside.

Thursday we did not have school because of Veteran's day. It was nice having a day off, but it was pretty weird to have it off in the middle of the week. We didn't really do anything special; Katie and I did some shopping and saw Morning Glory.

Finally, on Friday we took the district writing benchmark. This took nearly the entire morning, so it messed with our schedule again. However, in the afternoon I actually got to have all of my students for the normal amount of time! We had to finish the movie from Tuesday and then we worked on some grammar that we are trying desperately to finish up.

So basically, I taught one lesson the entire week. While I have learned so many different things during my time here, one of the most important things I have learned is flexibility. While this week was very abnormal, teachers constantly have to be flexible with what they are doing. There is always a plan and always a schedule, but those things can and do change. There have been so many times this year where I will hear we are doing one thing one day and the next day we are doing the exact opposite of the original plan. And in my own teaching, I often find myself change lesson plans in the middle of class. For example, if my students are not understanding adverbs, it is important to take the time to re-teach and get to whatever else I had planned for the day at a different time.

I am going into my last full week of teaching. I feel about as nervous to end this experience as I did beginning it. This is truly the most bittersweet ending I have ever experienced. Look for a more exciting blog post next week.