Teaching Teachers

As last year, I am taking classes during the summer. This means I have to get up at the crack of dawn, stumble about getting ready and trying to remember everything I need to take with me for class, driving across town, sitting in traffic, and then the class starts...

I teach in a large, spread out county. The classes are never on my side of town. Not even once. So... I have have a drive of 45 minutes before each class, and when a class starts at 8 or 8:30, that is terrible for me, being a complete night owl.

Anyway... enough whining about that.

The classes that I am taking this year are two that i need to be certified to teach Gifted children. I am adding it to my certification, which is required if you want to teach the Gifted children.

Most teachers ask why on earth anyone would want to teach Gifted children.

I admit, they are a tough, nutty group, but I do love how creative they can be.

For the first class that I took this summer (and the real reason I have not been updating this blog), it was a 2 week long class, in which we met Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which the in-between days to work on assignments. I don't remember ever working so hard on assignments, even in college.

It has something to do with the fact that this is normally a class that would take an entire semester, but we did it in 2 weeks. So you have an almost immediate turn around on assignments.

While this is good at getting the class over with quickly, it also was just plain hard. It's not easy to create an entire unit on a set topic, and then create all the lessons, handouts, and the create fake student samples, so that you have something to show the students! This is, on the one hand, nice because you're supposed to actually use what you are creating, and since you create everything, it's all there.

On the other hand, you have 4 days to create all of the unit. I had my best friend pretending to be 12 year olds and filling out the handouts and writing journal entries and drawing pictures, something that thrilled her I'm sure.

But I do love learning more, even if it was painful. It makes me a better teacher, and I do like learning new things.

If only it wasn't so very far away.