WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU LEMONS, MAKE LEMONADE!


Tell me if this sounds familiar. You've worked hard during the weekend putting together your plans for the week. On paper everything looks perfect, one day flowing into the next, perfect coordination, a finely-tuned teaching machine. You come to school Monday and discover that there is an unscheduled school assembly which starts fifteen minutes into third period and will end with fifteen minutes remaining in fourth period. Now what do you do? Those wonderfully-crafted plans for third and fourth period just went up in smoke. You can't possibly cover the material you needed to cover in either period and you have no clue what you're going to do. Sound like anything you've had to face in the past?

If you are like me, if your school is anything like the schools I've worked at, that scenario plays out quite a few times during a normal school year. But don't despair! There is a way to make it all work for you; all it takes is a little damage control at the beginning of the year.

Each year I have made it a point to assign a semester assignment for each class I teach. I lay out the requirements, work on setting up the assignment that first week and give the kids my expectations and due date and tell them that they can plan on receiving scheduled and unscheduled class time to work on the project so they had better have their work with them each and every day in case it is needed. This is a perfect solution for those periods that are interrupted, leaving you with fifteen minutes to kill and no chance of starting your plans for the day. Just close your plan book, drop back ten yards and punt, going with the semester project.

And to think, you get this advice for free!

Bill Holland