Snow Days.......

I'm going to say something that is probably going to be fairly unpopular with some of my fellow teachers and definitely with any students out there.  But I hate snow days, there I said it.  I've never understood the fascination with them.  Maybe it's because most of my grade school childhood was spent in California where we didn't have days off for weather.  And then my last couple years were in upstate New York where you needed to have a couple of feet fall overnight to get a snow day.  And sure, the "breaks" are nice I guess, but it's not like it's a day lost as most seem to think.  The days almost always get made up.  So now I sit here, having had 1 teaching day out of the last 10 school days with exams and snow days.  The semester just started and now I feel like I'm behind the 8 ball already.  And don't get me started on how most teachers are expected to come in during these days.  Most businesses close or allow others to work from home, having teachers come in for some of these days is just silly.  Most of what we need to do can be done remotely now too, no need for us to burn sick days when we have to stay home because our children can't go to school or daycare either.

Anyways, enough of that rant, today is finally day 2 of the semester for me.  Somethings I'm looking to do this semester as I've moved from AP level back to regular world history and moved to block schedule from a traditional.

1. First, going to continue to spend time and energy on big picture/themes.  Their NC Final isn't about remembering the typical historical who, when, where, what, so my class won't really either.  
2. I'm going to continue to do my question of the days like I did with my AP students.  Won't do them as often, but still good practice and I feel they learn from break down key topics & I can reinforce main information.
3. I'll also continue to use DBQs and the SHEG lessons, I want to get students to be able to read sources, make opinions, see both sides of a topic.  Teach bias and point of view.  Let's be honest, those skills are more important than remembering how many Roman emperors there were.
4. I want to do more to help bring in current events, so we'll have a quick current events Friday piece.  I'll see how it goes, but it's something I've kind of wanted to do for years, but never felt I had time.  Just little pieces, bring world news and events into the classroom and put it in front of the kids.  Let them discuss how it relates to our lives, or how it relates to what we're learning about.
5. Lastly, I'm able to use a program called Canvas through the Home Base program (although I'm sure you can use it without being a home base school like all of NC is).  It's used often for online classes, but so far it's a place that I can put everything online and organized for my classes which is nice.  Supposedly I can grade assignment, give quizzes, etc through Canvas and it'll go straight into my gradebook.  I'll write more about it as I get used to it all.

So that's all for now, off to get ready to see my students, I feel like I have to remember what I'm actually doing it's been so long.  Thanks for reading as always.