Sub Pay

Substitute teacher pay is horrendous. Many new teacher try to rely on substitute teaching to makes ends meet while job searching immediately after graduating. But $55/day is barley minimum wage and doesn't pay the bill, let alone the college loans!

Family trees

Today my US History classes turned in their family trees and I thought it would be great if as they came up with them to show the class their posters and tell them one interesting fact the they found out while researching for the project. It was interesting to hear how surprised some of the students were by what they had discovered. I feel good that if it were not for the project they might never had found some of this information out.

Maps

I think I would really enjoy teaching a geography class once I get my Social Studies certification. I did a lesson in my US History class where the student mapped out conservation efforts that Teddy Roosevelt's administration put into effect. The students seemed to really enjoy it and so did I. I remember back to when I was in middle and high school that doing map projects and exercises ion geography class was one of my favorite things to do because you didn't have to be very creative to do it. Anybody should be able to follow simple instructions and place items correctly on a map.

Attendance

The attendance at this high school is awful! There are no repercussions for students missing school, no matter how much, as long as their parents excuse them. I feel there should be a limit to the amount of school a student is allowed to miss. I had one student at the beginning of the school year miss over two weeks because she went to Disney Land! Where I went to high school, if a student misses more than seven days of any class they lose credit for that class. The only way they can then get credit is if they make up the hours missed in Saturday School. I really keeps the absences down and students actually beg their parents not to make them miss any more school.

Deer Season!!!

As a hunter I enjoy deer season. As a teacher it is the worst thing on earth!!! I have a half dozens students missing today and there is a major 4 chapter unit test. I am certain I will need to track every one of them down to get them to take the exam upon their return. It is also the students that can not afford to miss school that are taking a week or more off to "go to camp." One student, that I know of, is not coming back until after Thanksgiving break! He is barely passing the class as it is and will now miss several assignments and probably a couple quizzes.

AP History

I have recently taken over teaching AP History for the next couple weeks and it is almost overwhelming with the amount of work involved prepping for it. Now I am teaching three classes; economics, general US History, and APO History. The workload for AP is about three times as much as the workloads for the other two classes combined. The experience is amazing but I do not think I will be ready to teach an AP class full time as a new teacher. I think no matter what a teachers level of area content is, at least five years should be dedicated to teaching general education classes before diving into teaching AP. This class is more intensive than the HS126/127 US History classes at NMU were!

Sleep

Not getting enough sleep!!! Student teaching is definitely the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life. I took over all classes last week and since then I've been getting about 4.5 hours of sleep a night. My normal week day looks like this:

4:00 wake up and write lesson plans (I work really well at that time for some reason)
6:45 leave for school, make copies
7:30-12:30 teach 2 US History classes, AP History, and 2 Econ classes, and lunch
12:30-5:30 grade papers, write lesson plans,
5:30-7:00 cook and eat dinner
7:30-11:30- write more lesson plans and read material

I hope that with time I become much more efficient. This is only week two but it is definitely taking its toll

This is NOT a complaint only an observation