Weathering the Storm with Nana!

I am very fortunate that my grandmother lives right near PHS! I have spent the storm with my 90 year old grandmother and she has declared us "survivors of the storm!" As I type this, we are sitting in the Warwick Public Library because her house does not have internet. Last Friday, PHS had a snow day, and for once I was not happy about it! I was supposed to start teaching my first class on Friday (after what seems like a million years of sitting in the back of the classroom just observing the students) and I was looking forward to starting an introduction to "Literature of the Modern Age: 1914-1945" or, Unit Four. Nevertheless, I have used this three day weekend as an opportunity to continue planning my lessons, and get better at playing Yahtzee.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow when I can teach my first class and start the new unit! Even as I type this, I am not nervous to teach but rather, I am anxious to start teaching! I feel like I am ready and prepared to take this first class Look out period four, here I come!

I will be taking on an additional two classes after they finish up their unit on transcendentalism with my CT. Instead of doing a poetry slam like period four (which I was fortunate enough to observe), they are ending the unit by watching "The Dead Poets Society" and then doing a Socratic Seminar on it, which I presume will take over a week. It's strange to think that I won't be taking on these two classes until almost March (because February vacation is next week), but it will give me the chance to teach my lessons to period four and then reflect upon them and revise them to make any necessary changes before teaching the same lessons to periods two and three.

My Nana has been a great sounding board for me to bounce my ideas off of, as she is a former teacher herself! As she was alive for most of the "modern age", I used her as a reference to gain historical insight on the United States from 1922-1945. I'm not entirely sure how accurate her stories are from that time period, but they seem to check out when I cross reference them with history books! If nothing else, her stories will help to add to a colorful introduction to the "Modern Age."