Teachers Log: A Month in.

As of yesterday I have been a full time teacher for a month. Though my class is small, I only have two students, the near constant interaction with them can lead to issues when preparing for the day. This has lead to a few failures on my part, as well as some interesting victories.

Now, before I continue I want to give a little backstory. I have been self employed for the last six years or so taking contract jobs when I could, doing free lance development and IT work mainly. This served as a way to give the household a little extra cash, but never enough to make ends. At best it was a stop gap measure, a way to slow the entropy that living just above the poverty line and just below the middle class seems to create. So as the contracts dried up, and my first born son's experience at school became less and less bearable, it became clear that I should be put in charge of his, and his brother's education.

So I started planning, researching, find out all I could about how to do "home school." I looked into several software's, but none of them felt right. So I set out to create my own, and with the help of @kalynflanagin we found the right curriculum for the boys which would be augmented with the software I was creating. Though, as it often happens with projects I failed to account for life's little issues and was unable to have the software fully ready by day one of classes.

Given the lax rules that Texas has for home school we had amazing flexibility on how we scheduled out classes. Below is the current schedule:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday
P.E.	P.E.	P.E.	P.E.
Journaling	Journaling	Journaling	Journaling
Grammar	Math	Grammar	Math
Writing and Rhetoric	History	Writing and Rhetoric	History
Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
Read to Self	Read to Self	Read to Self	Read to Self
Spelling	Spelling	Spelling	Spelling
Keyboarding	Keyboarding	Keyboarding	Keyboarding
Science	Computer Fundamentals	Science	Computer Fundamentals
Aquatic Science	Game Development	Aquatic Science	Game Development

Though it seems like a full schedule we're done by 2:30 pm most days assuming everyone is on task. The last class of the day is considered a "project" and though I try to plan out what we do in them sometimes the class may only last 15 minutes and other times it may be more than an hour before we are done.

The actual instruction in most classes is similar to what you would expect. Except that as a part of their weekly work the boys create a video summarizing what they have done for the week. The concept behind these weekly videos is to solidify the concepts for the students as well as giving them practice in public speaking. If you are interested the videos can be found on DTube (until they get deleted) just look for my account and you should see them there.

In the future these videos will include a structured post about what the boys did that week, so even if the video isn't as informative as I would like those that prefer reading will get an even better idea of what goes on at "Flanagin's School for Creators" and is a planned feature of eduSteem.

Successes

Over all I think we are finding our feet. The boys are getting more and more confident with their reports and their writing and spelling has improved. I'm not sure we got the right math book as they are flying through it without much trouble, and keyboarding is a full on success thanks to TuxTyping (a FOSS typing program that is both educational and fun). Aquatic Science and Science have been oddly in-sync so we can usually just combine the lessons and our first field excursion to get samples of water and life from the local lake was a huge success. Computer Fundamentals has become more of a "program a day" affair which is fine by me, and Game Development has been loads of fun overall.

On a more personal note my second born, Seamus (pictured above), has started writing his own fictional pieces, and though they lack polish there are some amazing story telling elements within. Here is one of the lines from the story.

It is not for you! I am not evil! You took my heart... You took my ink... You took my home... --Seamus Flanagin

Failures

The biggest failure is in my time management as stated above when you live, eat, and play with your students it becomes hard to find time to plan lessons or gather supplies for those that are pre-planned. The boys both want me to be an active member of their lives and I am beyond thankful for that, but it is still an issue to overcome. I think my other failure is in transitions between classes, in public school the boys would be ushered from class to class and even in that small movement. That 3 minute walk from history to math, or from math to lunch the students, and the teachers get to have a reset. I also have a hard time gauging what to expect from them. Some days they surprise me with their depth and understanding, and on others they may as well have stayed in bed for all they are willing to contribute.

Going Forward

I think I am going to try to incorporate yoga into the daily routine. I also hope to have the boys on eduSteem soon which should automate some of my daily tasks. I'm also considering moving the videos of the boys create to a separate account as a form of self curation. I've already ensured them that any money they make from STEEM is theirs, so having it separated from my account would give me a much easier time budgeting. I also hope to intergrate as many features of STEEM as I can into the eduSTEEM interface.

However, at this rate it might be a while.

As always feel free to follow me for updates on this and my other interests. I'll post about my adventures in teaching from time to time, but it isn't the only thing I'm about by far.

Till next time,