Count down to detention

Okay, so that doesn't really make sense, but I was thinking of the Megadeath "Countdown to Extinction" thing mixed with me starting my full time teaching job on Monday. I've gotta say, I'm a bit nervous about it. I know I have plenty of time to prepare on Monday, but I don't have things quite worked out yet for the Speech and Drama class I'll be teaching. The 9th grade English I've got set, no problem, thanks to teaching Greek/Roman Mythology to the 8th graders last fall and keeping a nice unit full of copies of lesson plans and materials to use in the future. God, I'm thankful I took the time to do that.

The Speech and Drama class is another story--I've never taught it before, nor have I had A LOT of experience with it. I took the required Speech class for my liberal arts college, and I did read plenty of dramas in my literature classes. But many of those dramas aren't appropriate for the age and language proficiency level...plus they're in the anthologies I don't have with me here. I didn't think about it when I was home last time. I did print off a bunch of short plays, but what I think I'm going to have to do is find a play in the text book that they haven't covered yet. I want to do a lot of hands on work with them, including some storytelling, skits, mono/dialogues, speeches and presentations, but I'll need some materials to read and analyze with them too. AND we'll have to take some notes and quizzes on dramatic techniques, persuasive strategies, and such. ::sigh:: I have my work cut out for me. It's been a while since I've come up with an entire thematic unit.

So yeah, that's what's up this weekend, along with Party #2 for Chris. He's having a BBQ tomorrow so that more friends can stop by and just hang out for a while. Birthdays on weekdays just don't work out so well. Tricia and I have been doing some running, trying to reshape ourselves. Mostly, I just want to get back the endurance and trimness of last summer, and maybe get even better, since I'll have started already in Spring. This weather is friggen awesome, although my classroom is pretty toasty. I guess that's better than the frigid room I had during my student teaching way back when, where the AC was so high in the room I was wearing sweaters inside and tanktops outside. Nothing worse than nipping out in front of teenagers :P