Project – One Month Down

Time is flying in the project. We have 3 weeks until Easter vacation. Following our 10 day holiday (where I will be visiting my mom in Hawaii – poor me!) we have 9 days to finish the production. So, 23 days. Oh my.

So far, it has been challenging to build a sense of community and safety when the composition of the class varies every day. Now that we’re getting down to the crunch, I should have most of my students during all drama classes. Up until this point, they have been taking Entrepreneurship/English/Information Processing classes during some of my drama offerings. However, starting this week we’ve backed Commercial Cooking and Drama classes, so that I’ll have the majority of my students all the time.

Last week we worked on brainstorming ideas relating to the English themes. The idea was to give us a place to start when we look at building scenes for the collective. This process offered many insights into my students’ lives. They are so honest – it is refreshing.

I find the level of staff engagement to be very invigorating — we are all running at full speed, but we’re running the same direction. The professional dialogue is wonderful. Teaching is usually an isolating profession, each teacher working independently for 5 hours a day in their classrooms. However, the collaborative nature of the project has facilitated discussion about big educational questions, and enabled lots of collaborative problem solving. Also, our twice daily homerooms where we work with students to schedule themselves has enabled us to really get to know the students. After spending the first part of the year teaching grade 9, and now working with the grade 10s, I know almost all of the students in the school.

Life continues to march onward outside of the work day, and I have two assignments due coming up in my grad class — one is a “metaphor for teaching” where my wife and I will wow the class with the similarities between good improvisational theatre and good teaching. Also, I have an assignment on assessing using documentation, which involves a bunch of picture taking. I’ve also put the finishing touches on my ethics application, so I can use data from the project for my thesis. It’s a very tight timeline to get it approved, and I’m not sure if it will come back in time to use the students from the project, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try.  I also had my second interview for an admin position for next year on Tuesday and I think it went well. I’ll hear within a week or so whether or not I made it to the next level – a panel interview. Alright, this should assuage the guilt I’ve felt about not updating the blog — now I’m off to metaphorize!