Department Meetings & SGOs
Although I don't start teaching until October, when I will be covering a maternity leave, I've been attending my Department's meetings in the meantime. I figure it can't hurt to get to know everyone and keep up with everything before I start.
Yesterday the English Department supervisor met with just the new English teachers to see how we were doing. It gave me a good idea of what to expect when I start next month. It also helped me bond with the new teachers, most of whom I'll be working with since every single one of the 9th grade English teachers is out on maternity this year. We decided that we'll keep having one new meeting per month with the new group. After our meeting I helped two of the girls decorate the room they share and they let me read some of their students' summer reading assignments and bio poems.
Today was the regular monthly English department meeting. We worked in grade level groups to decide on our pre-assessments for the SGOs (student growth objectives), something new to our state this year. Going into the meeting I was a little apprehensive because I've never taught high school before and I was worried that I wouldn't have a lot to contribute. Luckily our little 9th grade group was made up of me, the teacher I'm taking over for in October, and 3 leave replacements. Since the majority of us are novice teachers, I felt a little better. We decided to use Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail as our pre-assessment piece and agreed on some multiple choice and short answer questions. Even though I won't actually be the one administering the assessments (either pre- or post-), it's definitely beneficial to be able to say that I have experience writing SGOs. I'm looking at this whole experience as a kind of trial teaching. I'll be on my own in the sense that it's not like having a cooperating teaching, as in during student teaching, but I also have a great support system already so I'm feeling really confident.
The teacher that I'm taking over for gave me a whole bunch of materials to look through and a rough guide of where she thinks she'll leave off and I'll pick up as far as what to teach. I spent last week mapping out my Of Mice and Men unit, so this week I'm going to work on the Short Story unit. If I stay on track, I'll have pretty much everything planned out by the time I start in October!