Nouvel an, nouveau semestre

Thursday began the spring semester at Northgate High School. I greeted my second period French 2 class with "Good morning and welcome to Human Sacrifice 101." The uneasy silence followed by an even more uneasy flutter of chuckles was a great reward.

Once again, I have only three class periods but five preparations. Being a minority language makes for time consuming lesson planning in order to offer a rich program to my students. Fortunately, this school year I have had help with the arrival of Mme Brockman, une québécoise, who took over the level one classes. That scheduling change allowed me to teach a section of visual arts, and I enjoyed the challenge of extending my teaching experience.

This new term requires extensive documentation to accompany my daily teaching as our school embraces "standards based instruction". It's the new catch prhase, but I've been aspiring to standards based instruction with performance based evaluation for years. "Eduspeak" finally catches up with me. I guess that makes me a trend setter.