It's Summer! I'm a teacher which means I'm still working!

It's Tuesday and my last day of school was the Thursday before last.  Since then I took just a few days off.  Last week I spent one day cleaning out papers from last year and putting my home office in order and I spent three days at school working on writing the new science curriculum that needs to be in place for next year.  This Monday (it's Tuesday today) I started taking 3 (that's right 3!) graduate classes towards a master's in teaching English as a second language (TESL).  Since our school has so many students who are immigrants and are English language learners (ELLs), it is becoming a requirement to teach at our school, that you are certified in TESL.  Since certification is only 4 classes short of a Master's degree I decided to take the extra courses and get the M.Ed.  To do this I decided to do 3 courses in a condensed summer session. In other words I am taking 9 graduate credits in 6 weeks.   That translates to 3/4 of a year of graduate school in 6 weeks!

The good news is two of these classes are online so at least I'll be able to stay home with my kids while I work on them.  The other good news is the class that isn't online is done in 7 days spread over  week and a half straight.  The class is on media literacy.  We are learning about how the new media effects our students, how to use it as a teaching tool and how to compete with it to grab our students attention.  The class is utterly fascinating and I am getting a lot of great ideas to use in class with my students.  Today we used an online site to make a comic of a poem.  I am loving every minute of this.  One of the things I like best about teaching is that there are lots of opportunities for creativity.  Using technology in teaching has become one of my niches.

This is the comic I made in class today.  It was made using a fun website called Pixton.  I'm really looking forward to having my students use it.  I think one of their first assignments is going to be to make a comic that outlines the scientific method!  I'm excited about this.