ASCD Teacher Leader

In my last post about the Aggie Mega Wagon, I mentioned that I have been super busy at work. Part of the why I have be so busy is because I was picked by my principal to be a ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) teacher leader. This basically means that I was trained in DI (differentiated instruction) for a couple of days and will be responsible for implementing DI in my classroom as well as training the reading/language arts department in DI.

The training was one of the best trainings I have had in my whole career. Basically, our trainer (Maria) talked about how DI is not just another "bag of tools" but rather a philosophy on teaching. Maria was able to put everything I believe (and some things I didn't know WHY I believed them) into a nice pretty picture for me. The training reconfirmed a lot of things that I already practice in my own classroom and brought the knowledge of why I do them...if that makes any sense.

This year we are also adoption a new textbook and of course I am on the textbook adoption community. It is definitely a learning experience. On Tuesday, I will be going to the district-wide meeting to preview all four of the companies that are "fighting" for the contract. It will be a long day, but I am kinda looking forward to it.

Other than that, I feel like I am in some type of meeting everyday until 4:00 or so. Then when I am not meeting with whomever, I have to stay at school to work on grading papers, typing lesson plans, filling out IEP forms, filling out LEP forms, modifying test, creating differentiated activities for my classes, new seating chart, e-mailing parents, cleaning out the bookroom, setting up blitz tutorials, etc. The "To Do" list never seems to get shorter...in fact today it just kept growing no matter how hard I was working.

To those people out there who think teachers never work hard or have it "easy"...you can kiss my butt. :)