Thursday, August 9, 2012

You know your a teacher when...

I had a scare today, a big one. I realised that I had only prepared for 1 of my geography classes.

Going into this school year I had expected to only be teaching one joint class of Geography only to discover that I will be teaching instead an entirely separate class between grades 7 and 8. This has led to a few hiccups in my planning. Take for example today when I had roughly 15 minutes to prepare an hours worth of lesson and activity. After I got over my initial panic I reached back into my brain to remember an article I read about a fungi that is destroying the worlds most popular banana. Due to the monoculture of the banana industry it will eventually eradicate the iconic big yellow banana within the next 10-20 years. Oddly enough this same thing has already happened once around the 1950's. Causing the distribution of the common banana we know now.
So I came up with a lesson about mono culture then created an activity where I split the students into groups. Farmers, Fruit distributors, Fruit Transporters, and Scientists all facing this impeding banana fiasco. They were each tasked with coming up with a solution in regard to their assigned profession. The students had some great ideas and got a kick out of the concept. For next week I asked them all to bring in an object from the grocery store explaining where its from and how it got to Jakarta.

I walked out of class with a huge sigh of relief... You know you are a teacher when you can come up with that much in the few minutes before the class begins. I am so grateful to have had creative Parents who taught me to be creative as well. Note to self, prepare for two lessons next week. 

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