A New School Year and Old Technology

Had my first week back at school and to say the classes are large is an understatement. I currently have five classes (4 senior, 1 junior) with my smallest” regular” class at 35 and my largest at 43. I also have one smaller class of 29 for a “lower level” class, which has 29 (so they can get more personal attention, but it’s all the same work) up from the usual 10-20 it has been in previous years. Seriously people! I do need to eat and sleep! And I am not alone; it appears that most of the English department is overwrought with students.

We did have one English teacher quit the week before school started. At first they needed people to give up their prep hours and cover these classes. So being the helpful, loyal person I am (and after finding out it could add an extra $7000 a year/$200 a paycheck) I volunteered for this. Fortunately, the did find someone to sub for these classes and gave him one of my English 11 for another English 12 so he could have all Junior classes. He is a very pleasant fellow who has been on the school board and has taught college, but he hasn’t taught high school before. I think he is acting as a long term sub until they can find a qualified teacher (for the core areas, you have to be certified for a permanent position). Since I’m right across the hall and teach that level, I will be helping him out quite a bit (I usually try to help out new teachers anyways, so nothing new there). His class sizes are just as high….which might be a dilemma for me.

See, as aforementioned, I did volunteer to give up my prep hour and it just happens to be when this man and another teacher have very large classes. The school is looking to lower some class sizes…so I may be taking on another 20-30 students. The real crux of this is: Are they going to ask others to help lower MY larger class sizes at the same time? I doubt it. I suppose I could say no, but I feel for this man and I really could use the extra money…decisions, decisions…

As for the old technology, it was really Aly’s doing. We only have one TV in our house (I KNOW!) which is used for all our TV, DVD, video games, etc…so if someone is watching TV, you are out of luck if you want to play…oh…a video game. Especially when you just got a PS2! So Aly went outside where I’ve been storing some items from our storage area. I had an old TV I was thinking to giving to charity or something and then got busy, so it’s been out on our porch for several months. I figured it was ruined. She cleaned off all the spider webs (literally), wiped the dust, and brought it in…It worked! Now this TV is so old that it only has a coaxial cable attachment (no, not even RCA attachments…wow it’s outdated)…so off to Wal-Mart to buy an adapter for coax to RCA and a coax cable. (And since our house sucks, we also had to run another extension cord to the unit so as not to blow a fuse) All plugged in and SUCCESS! Now she can play her games on a ……13” screen! She seems to be happy, but I think I may need trifocals now.