Ways to cope with the grind

As I've stated in an earlier blog, I work at a middle school. I found it interesting today when a teacher looked at the class and stated that "school had finally started." While we have now been in school almost a full week, many classes have only met a handful of times because of our block scheduling. This meant that up until Monday and Tuesday of this week, much of class consisted of the typical beginning of the year "housekeeping." I found it amusing that a teacher said that, and noticed something because of that statement that has to do with our class. Because of block scheduling, teachers must come up with a variety of ways to keep the class interested. During today alone I saw two videos and several PowerPoints. I bring it up just to point out that the grind does get long and we, as teachers need to be able to break up classes, and keep the attention of our students. Hopefully we don't over use these strategies, but use them in a helpful way that keeps things fresh for our students and help keep us sane.