Sorry that I’ve had my blog on the back burner the past couple weeks. Although I’ve been back in the classroom for the last three weeks, the classes I’m teaching are still in disarray.

Classes begin promptly at 8:00am and end at 2:00pm for all public elementary students here on Guam. During the six hours the students are on campus, four and a half of those hours are dedicated to direct instruction (more), one hour is for lunch/recess, and thirty minutes is for a language class. Total time spent: Six Hours.

What does this all mean? It means that I basically have NO TIME to teach any content areas (science, social studies, art, music, spelling, and health). How do I give grades for these content areas I have no time to instruct? You guess is as good as mine! haha.

The Direct Instruction programs that I do instruct are geared to the core subjects of Reading, Language Arts, and Arithmetic. If we do not teach the required four and a half hours of Direct Instruction in our schools, the Guam Public School System WILL lose all U.S. federal funding. Due to this fact, it has become impossible to meet the required contact hours for other core subject matter.

To make matters worse, our school coordinators have been unable to place all our students in their appropriate classrooms. We’ve been recieving record numbers of new enrollments and there has been some redistricting done, so I’ve been getting new students every few days. This really gets annoying when you attempt to teach your students the classroom rules, daily routines, etc.. then have to restart to teach a new set of children who walk in your door. I’ve also attempted to organize my class lists, gradebooks, and other documents, but all this updating on my computer and reprinting has been driving me bananas.

To top things off I just go hit with a bad case of the flu. I feel like shit but its really tough to miss any instructional time during the first couple months of the school year. I need to be in there. Bleh. Im pretty stressed out and the school year has yet to begin! I think I need a beer.

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