This is another short blog post, composed just before my self-imposed deadline.
Teaching is made up of many things. There are lots of other things battling for one's attention, but at the core of teaching are three pieces: planning, teaching, and assessing.
All three parts take a tremendous amount of energy. The teaching portion is limited by the amount of time in the instructional day for traditional schooling. In an elementary school setting, that's about 6 hours a day. It takes a great deal of time to plan and a great deal of time to assess. The end result doesn't always demonstrate the time it took beforehand. The 40-minute (or 10-minute) lesson can take hours to prepare. The 20-minute talk looks effortless but involved lots of deliberation and consideration. The comment to an assignment is just one of many (62 for a certain category) to contemplate, compose, edit, post, and document. What gets the priority? Really, all three need to happen and in a timely fashion. This weekend, I spent a lot of my time in front of my computer doing some of this. I'm getting better at (or maybe my spouse is getting better at encouraging me to) taking short breaks to clear my head and spend time with the family doing fun things (like watching My Hero Academia or getting Krispy Kreme donuts). I did a lot of assessment, which previous blog posts like this one show can be challenging for me. I feel good that I got a significant portion of it done - but like cleaning, planning and marking never really end.
As for planning, there are big plans coming up: Unleashing Learning, another GTA Resource Fair, the Forest of Reading voting day, Heritage Fair, the Festival of Reading, yearbook, Quiz Bowl, Red Maple Marketing, and of course the regular running of the AQs and day-to-day teaching. As a preview, here's a promotion card about my contribution to #tdsbUL23.
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