On AP courses and split attention

Today was my second day, and much of it was spent in preparation. I now have an ID badge, my parking pass and a general sense of what I'll be teaching. I am trying to get a headstart now on what I want my solo-taught sections to look like, but my sense of readiness varies for each class:

Freshman Mid-Level: Here I feel in my element. We are talking about The Odyssey, a book I am very familiar with. On top of that, we're using a new translation I'm not familiar with but am rapidly finding stuff to talk about concerning. I already have three ideas for written assignments, a general outline of how I'd like to tackle the books and an almost page long list of what I want students to get from The Odyssey.

Advanced Placement Literature and Composition: Ah, but here's the rub. During my own schooling I had never taken any AP courses, and so I'm a bit unfamiliar with the whole process. It seems that the course centers around a final AP test, but at the same time I need to actually teach the literature in fullness and completeness as well. This test is something very new for me and I'm not sure how to address everything I might need to on it. I think I need to focus on skills rather than content, and I have been assured by Mrs. N that I should aim to deal with the students like it's a college classroom. It gets a bit more complex here, because as I mentioned I will be teaching my favorite book, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Despite having taken two courses which featured this book, I don't know what to say about it. There's so much there that I could easily make an entire course on the book, so how can I choose the most important parts, the most significant things in the sum total of a novel I've gone back to and discovered new things with each reading? Finding the most important parts is really a struggle for me, and I am trying to isolate individual moments that stand out in my mind, and try to structure activities and discussions around those.

Journalism: I have done very little for this class, both because I am unfamiliar with the subject and because I haven't gotten a course outline for where things are happening yet. I feel least comfortable here, but the subjects I will be solo teaching are definitely within my area of knowledge and interest. I just need to find out when that will be.

Today was also our initial training on PowerSchool, an education based software to input grades, manage attendance and do most everything else. From everything I've heard, the program has fascinating potential, but it seems we're just using the barest of features so far. I think we'll need to push to try more with it - there's no sense in using something so powerful and with so many features if we're never going to try them out.

On one tangentially related piece of personal news, I've discovered that I really need to eat a filling lunch. My plan for the day had been to eat a small snack and then eat once I got home. I earned myself an extremely painful splitting headache which made it impossible to concentrate for the last two hours of my day. I scarfed down food and then slept once I got home and I felt markedly better, but those last two hours were impossible. I don't think I can get myself to the point where I can just snack and eat later - I wouldn't have been able to teach in that shape.

I've also discovered tonight that writing a blog post, even a short one like this, can be a real pain in the butt when you're splitting your attention. During the course of this short and really simple writing, I had four people talking to me over Instant Message conversation, two technical computer problems, three opened tabs and one briefly watched YouTube video. Even the fairly mundane act of writing about what I did today (which in and of itself isn't too much) was almost impossible with everything else demanding my attention. This also calls into question the fact I'm just plain bad at multitasking.