Time.

How I have changed since the first week of teaching. When I first started all I could think about was: how am I going to fill all that time? Today the experience is much different. As I am up against the wall of “going to the Yukon” I have found it very difficult to get everything in that I wanted to. Time is such a limited resources and finding the teaching hours to successfully deliver meaningful content is difficult. How do I get it all in? I suppose I must be content with delivering as much as I can without sacrificing quality of teaching. There definitely seems to be a trade off. For students to properly digest, understand and work with material, I have seen, that they need time to process it. You must repeatedly come back to material in different ways, from different angles to solve different problems while continuously working on the same overall theme.

The experience of working with a class theme of the Klondike has shown me the incredible power of a class theme as well as the power of cross curricular studies. To date,  it has been so rewarding to teach my class. Seeing the result of the hard work pay off has been a tremendous experience.  Now that we are approaching our trip to the Yukon, I must admit that I too am anxiously anticipating the trip.  By having to create and teach all of my material I have become quite familiar with the history of the Klondike Gold Rush. As a result, I can not wait to see what it like why I get up there!

Time. Finding the right mix of depth and “fresh” is critical to making the most of it.

Tune in for another post very soon. TOC is approaching tomorrow. It will be interesting to see what life is like in other classrooms. We will see!