iTech Update!

While my friends were trying to get those tan lines on Thursday in the beautiful weather... I was in my first daylong training with my fellow iTech staff members. This time, we worked at Columbia River. (Weird being back at my old school...)
We immeresed ourselves into the idea of Project Based Learning and what that means for our staff. We dove into standards, big ideas, and driving themes. We read some research, participated in some activities, and started nailing down nitty gritty details... I will share some relevant thoughts and ideas here...

My schedule... We operate on an A/B schedule and every other Friday is 'special' TBD.
My A day... 4 periods total plus advocacy and lunch. My first two periods are prep (yep two preps in a row on that day) but advocacy is in the middle there. My first actual teaching time on A days isn't until 1:22 in the afternoon! I then teach a period of English, followed by social studies.

My B day... totally different. I teach all 4 periods Pe/Health, Global Forum (elective), Math, Science.

So basically, I better be sure I bring my A game to prep periods and get set up for the next 6 periods, because that's the next time I will have a break...

We started mapping out the year around the ideas of Identity (fitting for a school trying to find it's place in the first year)
Who am I? Where do I come from? Where do I belong?

Within those big ideas and statements we can fit our curricular needs.

There's still a TON of work to be done! I'm very thankful to be taking part in almost every single professional development opportunity that we have. I like to be in the know, and this will help that :)As a result, I am taking part in High Tech High (leaving Sunday) then AVID in Sacramento (that's our whole team) July 8-11. Here locally, I will be working with 3 other teachers and Christina for a week in July to plan out August... then Finally, we begin working full time August 8th really putting ideas into reality.