My day began, as almost all Thursdays do, with a PLC meeting. Mr. I showed us one of his QPAs (quality performance assessments, for those of you who aren’t fluent in Eduspeak), and gave a quick overview of the unit it’s part of, and then we used to district’s validation tool to assess it. It’s meant to be a constructive process, and when I went through it last year it definitely did make my assessments better, but it’s still a bit nerve-wracking to have your work so intensely scrutinized. Mr. I was a champ, though.
I dashed out of the meeting a bit early to meet Mr. W upstairs and set up for a video chat in my APUSGOV class (he has the fancy camera, so he helped me out). We were chatting with Ian Hines, an old friend from my campaign days who still works as a campaign consultant. He has a lot of really interesting experience domestically and internationally, and can explain some aspects of campaigning- especially digital stuff- far better than I can. Plus, he’s sharp and ridiculously self-assured, so he’s fun to talk to. I was impressed with the questions my students asked him (differences in how the parties use digital, differences between US campaigns and others, the impact of polarization and realignment, cybersecurity concerns, metrics for success....) It was a great class, and I’ll be able to reference a lot of aspects of it in my future lessons.
In World/English, Mrs. T checked in research notes while I gave a vocab quiz. Once everyone was done with the quiz, they had the remainder of the double block to outline and begin drafting their narratives. We’re keeping an eye on students who are falling behind, but, thankfully, there aren’t many; we reiterated check points and due dates, and made some suggestions about more effective use of class time, and most were back on track by lunch time. We have students who are finishing drafts early because that’s life in a heterogeneous classroom. I looked at two today that just need a bit more fleshing out and some editing work. One is about Andres Escobar’s death, and the other is about a road trip through Mexico.
Have I mentioned that I love the variety of students’ ideas for this assignment? Because I do.
I had a couple seniors come by during my prep time to retake the last APUSGOV unit test. We have a super cool guest coming tomorrow- and The Principal is coming in, too, which is a first- so they saw me nervously straightening up my room, and found it amusing.... until I discovered gum on the underside of one of my tables.
Seriously, why is that a thing that people do? It’s so disgusting. Buuuuut I scraped it off with a pair of scissors, then drenched them and my hands in hand sanitizer.
The room looks great now.
More about our super cool guest tomorrow. Stay tuned!
