Welcome to Me!

 This is perhaps the fifth blog I have started. hopefully this one will last longer than a month or so.

Being a teacher "in these troubled times" I thought it would be interesting to look at what happens during the year with my students and myself, and see how things change during the year. year

I am in the 33rd as a teacher. I started in North Carolina, moved to Illinois, and now in New York. I took a short break from education a few years ago to work as a programmer for an instructional design company. I am in my 4th year in my current district, where I teach chemistry, physics, meteorology, astronomy, and Introduction to Renewable Energy through one of the SUNY schools. I decided not to directly identify my district, but finding out would not be that hard, as I thing I am the only one in the world with my name (prove me wrong Internet land).

As we head into the school year, things are strange, and really do not know what is going to happen. The district has set up a schedule so only about half of the student are in the building at one time. We will have last names A-L on Monday and Wednesday, and M-Z Tuesdays and Thursdays, the days they are not in the building, they will follow their same schedule, but online.  but that is not all, some special needs students will be with us all five days, some students will not be in the building, but online all the time. The way we do vocational education in this state, the students go to a central location with students from other districts (we call this BOCES- Board of Cooperative Education Services) Normally some go in the morning, others in the afternoon, but this year, all BOCES students will go all day Thursday and Friday. Chemistry and physics have a lab period every other day, so this rotation is somewhat screwed up with students coming every other day.  We will survive.

So, I have been working this summer to make my classes workable in this format. At least I hope I have done so. We will see. The students start on the 14th of September.