First, get your stress level under control.
Second, when confronted with the "craziness" about you, tell yourself, "I am capable and developing my skills as a Master Teacher. I am fine. It is the system around me that is 'out of whack,'"
Third, take care of yourself, and treat yourself well. Treat yourself as kindly as you would your most cherished student. (In fact, you are learning, and are your most important student.)
As for planning, plan for the year. Map out goals and objectives in large blocks... for grading periods...then for each week. Use this map to guide yourself past the tendency to be activity driven, i.e., scurrying to find enough to do for your class tomorrow.
Train your students, step by step, with what you want them to do. Show them one step at a time, then add to their repertoire. You will be amazed at how their ability to complete complicated tasks increases over six or eight weeks.
As far as free materials, check my Website. This is an Open Source for Teachers' materials project...entirely without cost. You should find enough materials to keep you busy for quite a while.
I recommend a strategic, modular approach. Build a reusable library of generic materials such as Graphic Organizers. That way, you will be ready for learning opportunities that present themselves, and you can avoid the "What am I going to do tomorrow?" rat race.
Link to the site...
In your spare time, if you want to read "Tell it like it is" articles and commentary, you could check out my newsletter.
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Feel free to make suggestions on how I could improve the Website or the newsletter.
Joseph Chmielewski, M.S., L.P.C.
How-to know, do, live, dream, teach...with insight and imagination.
P. S. Check out the Classroom 2.0 social network. You can find lots of help there, especially if you have an interest in technology.
Link to Classroom 2.0...
Joseph Chmielewski, M.S., L.P.C.
How-to know, do, live, dream, teach...with insight and imagination.
http://www.classroomtoolkit.com