My great start to my second year!
Who would have known that getting ready for school to start is more stressful than actually teaching? I headed back to my classroom about 9 days before school started to set up my room the way I wanted. Since I started school in October last year, I had to leave the room really simple and mostly the way the teacher had it before me. I can truely say that I did not know what stressed felt like until those 9 days. I wanted everything to be perfect for my real first day. When meet the teacher arrived, the room looked just about perfect, but I still had a lot of the behind the scenes stuff left to do. Not to mention we didn't get the names of our students until around 3pm that day. Meet the teacher did go wonderfully and it was a lot of fun to meet about half my class. It seemed like I would have a great class this year from that little meeting.
I had one more day to finish things up and then the students would arrive that Friday. I felt fairly confident Thursday night about my real first day. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. How I wanted to discuss the rules and procedures, etc.
The kids came in Friday morning and there is one thing that was slightly annoying and that is the parents' fault not the kids. Let me ask. Who out in myspace world would actually send their child to school with all their school supplies still wrapped up with no name on anything and in one large store bag? I know my mom would have never thought of doing that when sending me to school. Do the parents think that the teacher has all sorts of extra time on the first day to unpack and put names on about 10 things for 20 students? How times have changed!
After spendig about 1 hour on organizing school supplies the day started and went extremely well. The kids listened and followed directions 10x better than my class last year. Even Carolyn, my TA, who has been in the classroom for at least 15 years said this is the best class on the first day she has ever seen. Not to mention it doesn't seem like I have any "pshycho" moms this year!!!! I think Mr. Regan was looking out for me this year when he made the rosters!
We have been in school for 5 days now and I'm no longer stressed and the routine is really starting to fall into place! I think I need to mention how much I like the new reading series. It has great plans for reviewing the letters of the alphabet. I am really ejoying teaching this. I'm curious to see what they come up with when we get into reading groups. My kids are still very well behaved! They listen very well while I am teaching and they enjoy participating! A few of them are starting to talk while they are working, but I have moved two of them and that has helped. I had three major discipline problems last year and as of right now, I am not seeing that in any of my students! Yay!!!
It will be nice to have a three day weekend! Thanks for listening and I know that I will have a ton more great experiences this year to share!
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