Mapping Our Asses Off!

The Brother hotel on the corner of Nanjing E. Rd and Fuxing Rd in Taipei, Taiwan. The elevated rail of the MRT Muzha line is in the middle of this photo. Taken on the 27th of January 2007 with a Nikon D200 and a 18-35mm lens. Part of the Muzha MRT Series 1.

Today, I needed a lot less tea to be functional. It’s already 3:30PM and I am only at my second cup of the day. To make things different, I had some Chinese soup at lunch. It was a bit bland but it warmed me up for the day.

Today, I have been working doubletime to finish the curriculum mapping for next semester. For those of you who aren’t teachers, curriculum mapping is when the teachers figure out what they will teach over the next 20 weeks. And I mean in detail, not just flippy flappy stuff. I was already doing this by doing my lesson plans. This is just further into the future and enables the teachers and administration to see what will be covered exactly and to modify i, if the need arose.

It is a way to force unorganized teachers to organize themselves and with our firstweek

And since we are going on vacation next week, which is paid vacation, this has to be finished by the end of the week.

No worries though, both my language arts classes have been finished today and the mapping has been already preapproved.

All that is left is grade 2 science. It is taking me a bit longer since I didn’t teach this last semester. But I am already into week 6, which means I have 12 more weeks to map. It has helped that I have been tutoring a grade 2 student in language arts, math and science, so I am familiar with the books.

4 more days till our first paid week long vacation.

Then another week and we leave for Thailand on the 15th of February.

Two weeks later, and everything will change.

At least I have the knowledge that the mapping I did for grades 4 and 3 will be reused at a latter date.

I am feeling a lot better than yesterday.

Or this morning. It is a beautiful day, and I am stuck inside for a few more hours.

I won a rice cooker at the dinner on Friday and my wife won a bike. I don’t know where she will be able to drive it, but I saw one of the bikes that were won in the raffle, and it rocked. It was a kick ass mountain bike, that was pretty light. I am looking forward to using it, even if the wife won’t be able to use it much.

Then again, who knows.

Construction and renovation is going on while I type this. The kids are always amazed on how fast I type. I have spent a lot of years behind a computer screen and most IT guys will type as fast as secretaries because it is just plain more efficient.