Too Much but Not Enough

The three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas break are just a little strange.  The kids just a got a taste of the coming break, and they are counting down the days until Christmas.  Even though we should be well rested from having the Thanksgiving holidays, we aren't.  Thanksgiving is not super restful even if you do slip into a tryptophan coma after lunch.  It's too hectic to be restful.

I am in a school that is committed to having first semester exams before Christmas break, and I am glad for that.  I have experienced both before and after Christmas exams both as a teacher and as a student, and it is immeasurably better to have them before the holidays.  However, it creates a  predicament in these weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We have too much time and not enough time.

We left for thanksgiving with two chapters left in my 8th grade curriculum.  There is not enough time to do those two chapters justice.  They are on solutions and on acids and bases.  However, there is too much time to just stop here and start reviewing for exams.  That would be waaaaaaay to much reviewing.  You may be thinking teach one of the chapters and save the other one for after Christmas, but these two chapters are extremely connected.  It would also create a situation in May where I would have to eliminate the teaching of magnets (and if there were any snow days in second semester, eliminate the teaching of electricity as well).  This is not desirable; I would much rather teach electricity than solutions.   I am pretty sure the kids wouldn't want to give up electricity either.

I am not in a unique position here.  Every teacher is making choices right now.  What do I include?  What do I exclude?  How fast can I teach it and not kill the kids?  It feels strange, but this is actually something we do every day all year long.  We just don't feel it at the other times because an approaching deadline has special psychological powers. 

Leonard Bernstein is credited with saying, "To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time."  I think it ties in with the English proverb, "Necessity is the mother of invention."  We, as human beings, rarely do anything until we have to - until there is something pushing us to do it - until we think it may not be possible. 

Deadlines are amazing.  They are when we figure out how to do too much with too little.  They are when we figure out what is essential.