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[factorykitchen]

good news: i got out of my staff development crap at noon and surprised the kids at the pizza party. it was weird meeting the person who was subbing for me while i was supposed to not be there. and the kids kept saying things like "why are you wearing those kind of clothes? and "you tricked us! you said you wouldn't be here!" yes, i tricked them,

Comments

[disembodiment]

Yay! Pizza party! That's good. I can't believe they make you take a pee test. Alicia told me about that curriculum. She said it's really awful for Spanish speaking kids because it's all repetitive and the kids are just parroting things back instead of actually comprehending anything. Go with that witty script in your head. Also, I thought of you today when a woman introduced herself in my orientation and said she used to be a preschool teacher but that it wasn't "challenging enough," which sounds weird to me because your job seems really challenging. There are actually a lot of former teachers in my class; it is odd.

[spcedog]

argh. i've been sitting in open court 1st grade training all week...since i'm going to be 4th / 5th special ed...heh it's weird...in new york we were still whole language which was good in theory...we got to choose our own books....but a systematic phonics curriculum was severely lacking...and the children had NO literacy support from home. open courts phonics seems impressively organized....i'm just really unimpressed by the literature choices...although...it's not as scripted as they say it is...you can totally use teacher judgement a lot. hrrm good luck!

[factorykitchen]

yeah, open court wasn't quite as bad as i thought it would be. it's just a complete turn-around from what i've been doing (very open-ended, emergent, play-based curriculum).