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25 February 2005: Second Time Around (4 of 6)
The reason why I’m dwelling on this now is because I had the opportunity to wear the shoe on the other foot. As it turns out, when I was just beginning my career, I did experience three horrible first day of schools in a row. After the third year, I finally realized that what I needed to do was write down my experiences and refer to them often as I refined my practice.
But now I understand that even this cannot compare to the opportunities for growth afforded by departmentalized teaching.
Unbelievably, when I finally did get to experience departmentalized teaching, it took less than two full weeks for the Second Time Around phenomenon to become visible in my teaching. I was teaching Spanish in an elementary school. My schedule was a basic prep-teacher deal: Twenty minutes in each of eight classrooms, including two classrooms of each grade from second through fifth.
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