Summer School

I had originally hoped that this summer I would finally be able to devote large increments of time to writing and my freelance work. I had it all planned out, too - morning coffee(s), extensive literary sessions in the Man Room, followed by sunny afternoons and evenings with the Fam.

Sounds awesome, right?

Well, it turns out that, for at least the month of June, the ol' writing thing is going to have to be a weekend feature...

Yours truly is teaching Summer School.

Yes, indeed.

I was recruited by my school administration to teach Social Studies to a motley assortment of 6th graders. Monday - Thursday, 8am - 12pm. Now, 6th grade Social Studies is unlike the 7th grade Social Studies I usually tackle - its completely different content. I'm accustomed to teaching kids about Ancient Rome, Europe, the U.S. and Canada, and Latin America. For Summer School, I'll have to take on Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Islands.

Not too bad, really... until you consider I have to plan for 240 minute consecutive class sessions. I've never taught that long straight before - my longest bout of teaching (two years ago, when we were in block scheduling) was 90 minutes. How the hell does one hold a twelve year old's attention for four hours straight... during summer vacation, no less? That's what I have to figure out between now and June 14th, when we kick off three weeks of our Eastern Hemispherical knowledge injections.

I've got twelve, four-hour long days in which to teach this band of 6th graders everything they were supposed to have already acquired during their 180-day, 6th grade Social Studies experience last year.

I'm preferring to remain optimistic about all of this, as the only thing I know about Summer School is the movie, Summer School... which, all in all, seemed pretty cool. Here's hopin'...

- Brian