thoughts on school, etc.

so i'm teaching at a new school now, y'know... i thought it was about time to fill you in on some of my thoughts as this new year gets started up.

i taught for 4 years at blue eye high school (behs) and am now at branson high school (bhs), and i tell you, that one little letter makes all the difference in the world!
for one thing, i'm now paid quite a bit more a year - little blue eye just doesn't measure up on the missouri pay scale.
there are a few other differences i've noticed also in these 2 1/2 weeks we've been in session.

i have two favorite things about teaching at branson vs. blue eye:

#1 the schedule - i have to show up to work at 7 a.m. (yikes!) but classes are over at 2:31!!
now, i usually don't leave right at 3 when we're officially allowed to leave since i have work to do, but even if i have several hours of grading or planning, i'm still home at a decent time. it's taken some adjusting to get up so early and be ready for coherent words to come out of my mouth at 7:30 sharp, but the trade off with having such an early ending time is worth it, by golly.

#2 i sincerely think the kids like me better here. at first i figured it's because they don't know me yet, but the more i think about it, the more i think they really do just like me better! perhaps the reason is because branson is a little less 'country' than blue eye, if you know what i mean. the most typical reason for a student to be gone from school in rural blue eye was to go hunting. the favorite color of most students was john deere green, and i don't think i'd ever seen more wranglers all in one place.
having never taught anywhere else before, i thought these characteristics were normal, or at least not extremely abnormal...
turns out they might be a teeny bit outside the norm.
of the 1,300 students at branson high, i think maybe i spied a camouflaged hat the other day. blue eye's student body of 200 usually sported somewhere around 199 of them...
:-)
just kidding.
they're just not the same kind of folk as i am. i don't judge them, by any means, but i think branson kids are just more my kind of people.
it's nice to be liked.
i'm still keeping in mind though, that it really only has been 2 1/2 weeks... this theory of mine could go downhill fast, you never know.

other differences...

i teach with 2 other art teachers here. there are pros and cons about this, but the main pro is that i feel more of a constant motivation to pull out the A-game with my teaching. for one thing, some of my art foundations freshmen will most likely go on to take painting or photography with the other art teachers and they're going to find out how well i did or did not educate them in the basics.
also, every friday we have an hour of collaboration time to discuss what we're teaching, etc, and that little jolt of accountability is going to be good to keep me wanting to do my best every week.
i always wanted to be a good teacher at blue eye, but i didn't have anyone caring a whole lot about what i taught.
accountability is such an important thing all around.

my classroom walls are much less interesting than my blue eye walls... no colorful murals to give splashes of vibrancy here. they're very boring white, and also about 40 feet tall, i think. the ceilings are waaayyy up there, making for huge expanses of wall. it'd be nice if i had huge artwork to display on them, but i don't. therefore, it looks like i teach in a warehouse. i'll try to come up with ideas on that topic. i don't think the branson administration will go for painting murals. even if they did, we can only reach about 12 feet high without risking our lives... that would leave an awful lot of wall.

my class sizes are bigger - i currently have two classes with 30 kids in each, one with 32(!) in it, then a 23, 24, & 25er...
comparatively, at blue eye i always had at least 3 classes with 15-20 kids... but i'm not really minding the bigger classes. having a few years of experience makes a big difference in the whole 'classroom management' department. i seem to be doing okay. big classes are more tiring, but so far, not too much to handle.
i'd really like to learn new ways of dealing with large class sizes though. i wish we had the opportunity to observe other teachers in their classes to see their unique ways of dealing with certain issues that crop up when 32 kids are all painting at the same time...

maybe the reason why i'm not stressing too much over the huge class sizes has something to do with my very favorite thing about teaching at branson - i only have ONE prep!! that's pretty amazing! i only had 3 at blue eye, which is still not that many. but here i only have to prepare to teach one class, art foundations, so i have it every single hour, 6 classes in a row. it can get monotonous somedays, but my whole attraction to teaching art is really about the relationships anyhow, so i'm paying more attention to the kids and enjoying them more than anything. i still pay attention to the art i'm teaching of course, but i love getting them started on projects and then walking around and interacting with them while they're working on it for a few weeks. this new year, i've actually been trying to go back to that basic love... it's easy to get tighter and stricter and end up annoyed in general with kids and schools and administration... i'm really wanting to stay relaxed and not so strict and just enjoy being a teacher. it's been easier to do starting at a new school. i have a hard time going back on myself - like if i never allow iPODs in class, but then the next year i do, it seems inconsistent. at blue eye, i never let them listen to music while they were working on projects, i would just put on music in the classroom. but after thinking about it, it makes more sense to let them listen to their own music if they want to. #1 it gets the troublemakers and noisy kids plugged in and out of your hair (especially in such big classes), and #2 it keeps people happy. so i just started out that way here, and i like being less of a strict person.
granted, there's some things you have to be strict on, but i don't want to be authoritarian just for the sake of establishing authority. i don't like power struggles. there's no legitimate point to them, and they're exhausting.

anyhow, all that to say, so far i'm having fun at branson.
:-)

AND i get to go home to my favorite person of all time every single day!
poor guy, he developed a cold the other day and now he's feeling a little junky.
he came over to the school and jogged with me in the exercise room on wednesday - we're going to try to do that 3 times a week. it's been too long since we've been lazy couch potatoes. it's time to get our rears in gear! for some reason he's lost 10 pounds though, since being married to me. i found those lost pounds - i've gained around 6 since the beginning of our wedded bliss...
my personal theory is because when i cook for us, i serve our plates up and give us both about the same amount of food, which is more than i normally eat, but less than he normally eats. so we're both going to end up weighing the same amount eventually.

maybe eventually we'll figure out the balance of portion control and getting back into exercising. then we'll both be healthy! that's the goal anyhow.

time to stop rambling. if you made it this far, kudos to you. you're a trooper.