Some teachers are able to revert back to their human lives when they return that classroom key and leave school for the summer. They enjoy the whole eight weeks of being student-free. They come back sun-tanned!
I am not one of those teachers. (Don't worry, I don't feel bad about it, so neither should you.) Many teachers enjoy their summer and teen/tween-free days, but still think about their classroom and curricula every now and then. Especially teachers like me, who are relatively new and just want to finally be better and a real teacher. We think of all the things we did not so well in the last school year and brainstorm how to improve. My pinterest page is filled with fellow teachers pinning ideas for the upcoming school year. We haven't been out of school for more than a couple weeks! This isn't a bad thing though. I'm very excited to return to work and continue to try to be awesome. One of the most disappointing things, though, that I've found is that pinterest and the internet in general is quite lacking in the high school teacher development area. There are tons of sites geared toward elementary school teachers; perhaps elementary school teachers like to share more or perhaps they have the time to share more. For a newish teacher like myself, I am constantly searching for great ideas and a different outlook, but often come up short.
This is probably what the first person who wanted to warm up leftovers felt like: but why isn't there a machine invented that can nuke this plate of Thanksgiving leftovers faster? And then there's me: but why aren't there more creative ideas and approaches to teaching high school biology? I mean, people have been teaching it for decades!! And this isn't just a lack of content on the web. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are quite lacking in the 9-12 department as well.
So I came to a conclusion. I'm going to have to pull a Percy Spencer (the man who invented the microwave, according to my two-second google search). I'm going to have to invent the ideas and approaches and be the one who makes something, hopefully useful, available for us biology teachers. While I highly enjoy typing endlessly my opinions on the downfalls of the American education system and the challenges I encounter regularly (this is not sarcasm, I love to vent), I think this approach may be a more productive use of my time. We'll see. I may end up like the many others before me, posting a couple times in September and October and then falling asleep with ungraded papers strewn about (this has happened to me at least twenty times this past school year) and never returning back to post.
:)
