Square One

So now that I've received my letter from the state informing me that I am a superficial teacher with no depth, I have to decide how to demonstrate that, no, really, I know what I'm doing.

I'm clearly not going to do the same unit again, as it was wholly unacceptable. And yet...if I teach it to my honors seniors, will that help? No, probably not. So what do I teach? And to what class? I have two honors classes and the seniors seem good so far (it's only day one), but should I wait to see the dynamic of my sophomores before I decide? The sophomores would be a little easier, in that I've taught that curriculum for two years now, and could just expand on a unit I've already done. On the other hand, the senior curriculum has some cool stuff (Oedipus Rex, anyone?) and that might be fun to explore with the seniors. However, reading translated Greek can be difficult, which may have been part of the problem I ran into with the failing unit. (I still maintain I did the best with the students I was given, but the state doesn't care about that. One teacher suggested I use a non-honors class, but those are always very...tumultuous when it comes to behaviors. Of course, if I was a good teacher, I'd have excellent classroom management...)

And the other thing is, if I'm going to teach say a short-story, how do I stretch that out for 5-7 hours of instruction (roughly 6 class periods)? Do I do more than one short story? I'm not sure doing a book works because of the way the cycles go...the kids can't retain anything across the shop cycle.

*big sigh* So yeah, this is where I'm at emotionally right now. My day did not suck too badly classes wise, and I had forgotten how quickly 50 minutes can go by when you're busy.

Hope all are well.