First Full Day

We had our first full day today with kids changing classes, breakfast, lunch, and all that fun stuff.

The good:

The kids, for the most part, seemed pretty good.  They seemed nice.  The were a tiny bit chatty but got the message when to be quiet.  Of course, we could still be in the honeymoon phase.  However, it seems I have a lot less girls with attitude and gang-banger wannabes than last year.  Thank the Lord.

Not a lot of absences.  There have been years past when I'd have 5-10 absent in every class - kids who've moved over the summer and weren't coming back (but didn't bother to tell us yet).  I may have 2-3 absent, if any absent at all.  And most of these kids know the routine around here, so that's nice.

My homeroom kids, especially the ones who are walkers and hang around for a bit while the buses are loading, are some of the nicest kids ever.  I already enjoy them.

The Bad:

Apparently the nutrition department installed new software in the cafeteria.  But didn't bother to tell or train anybody - they found out this morning when they went to serve breakfast and it took forever.  Breakfast and lunch were a challenge, but we worked it out.

PowerSchool is being difficult.  Enough said.

We have a number of eighth grade teachers teaching a number of sections of seventh grade which is confusing for the kids who are used to having all their teachers in one little area.  They'll figure it out tomorrow.  In the mean time I'm giving directions like, "go to the eighth grade hallway, turn left, and first room on the right," and I'm not sure they're getting there.

I'm tired.

Oh, and for those of you who commented regarding the four observations...That's what happens when you win Race to the Top.  New state law...professional licensed teachers get 4 observations a year, apprentice get six.  I feel sorry for our princpals who have to do all these.  I honestly don't mind, but I wish it wasn't the 2nd week of school.  I'll be lucky to know all their names by then.

Honeymoon

I don't know if I've finally figured out what I'm doing, or if the stars were just aligned right, or if someone up there just loves us, but this was the smoothest, and best, first day of school we've ever had at The School.  And this, despite the fact that PowerSchool has been very cranky as of late and was going up and down all morning long.  Our phones worked, the kids all had schedules, and everyone pretty much showed up where they were supposed to.

Now the schedule thing may not seem like a big thing to some folks, but being able to give a kid a schedule, listing classes and teacher names, is like gold.  For one thing, the parents want to see it.  And for another, it makes a kid feel important.  One of our aides had a son starting middle school across town and his schedule had his name on it, and nothing else - no one could figure out where he was supposed to go.  And from what he said about the lines in the guidance department, he was not alone.  (And he was NOT happy, either.)  Our guidance department seemed almost empty, especially compared to what a busy place it can be some days.

The two Criers that my team was bequeathed did quite well.  Both of these kids, Crying Boy and Crying Girl are painfully shy and very attached to their Mom's and Do Not Want to Be at School.  I had guidance put them both in Mrs. Reading-Mom's class because she's the warm, cuddly type (and is back from maternity leave, we missed her!) and she'd do well with them.  The good news is that neither cried today, and Crying Girl actually got up and participated in a "getting to know you" activity.  A huge accomplishment considering both these kids spent a lot of time in guidance just sobbing their eyes out.  (I actually know Crying Girl because she's in our Board Game Club - and she'd sit there and cry for whatever reason - she can never really give you one - but she'd come every week and once she got over the tears, she played games and made a few friends.)

My home room of 26 kids ended up with 24 showing up...which is pretty good.  They all seemed bright and happy to be there - none of the eye-rolling 'tude I got from my kids last year.  In fact, Mrs. Eagle and I both commented that these kids seemed more like kids, not like the twelve-year-olds going on 32 we had last year.  They were quite a bit of fun.   Chatty, but they got the message pretty quick over when to talk and when to shut up.  I actually had fun with them today, and believe me, there are years when it's almost torture to get through this first half day.

But then again, it's the honeymoon.  We'll see how they are by the end of next week.

But we can always hope, can't we?

Down to the Wire

So tomorrow is the First Day of School With the Kids (keep in mind, many of us have already been in and around the building since mid-July).  It's a half day and we only get our homeroom kids, and that in itself is a challenge.

Having a bunch of kids for three and a half hours is a bit, well, boring.  For me, as well as for them.  Keep in mind, we're used to 45 minute class periods.  So, in between all the mandatory blah, blah, blah, I've got some fun activities planned that hopefully will get the little darlings out of their seats and moving around and getting to know each other.  (It still kills me that kids actually can sit next to each other for a freaking year and still not know each other's names.)  Hopefully all the talk about code of conduct, and cell phone policy (changing this year and no one is happy about it), and clubs, and rules, and where the bathrooms are and all that very important but dreadfully dull stuff (especially if you are 12) won't drive us all around the bend.

Me?  All I hope is that the air conditioning continues to work as well as it has done all this week and that PowerSchool actually works.  It kept crashing today so it wasn't until about one o'clock before I actually was able to see my rosters and get them printed out.

The good news is that I don't have 37 in my homeroom this year.  I have a more manageable 24.  But then again, 20 kids can enroll tomorrow and who knows what chaos will ensue?

Wish us all luck!

Whap, whap, whap, whap...

Teachers report to school tomorrow for two days of meetings and rosters and human resources song and dance and fellowship and who knows what else.

Oh, yeah, copying.  Because goodness knows we have to give the kids STACKS of paper to get home and get signed and hopefully get back.  And that's not counting the huge stacks that came from The District Office and are now laid out in neat piles on tables with signs that say "Teachers Do Not Take Yet!"

So Mrs. Eagle and I, hating lines and being a bit, well, obsessive about Being Prepared, met at school this morning and spent about two hours getting our copies made - before all the other staff members showed up and needed to make their copies.  We copied off the new (four page) Science safety Contract (lovely light green color), the Seventh Grade Supply List (bright orange), Student Information Forms (white, how boring), Course Syllabus (cheerful yellow!), Study Guide for our first unit (lavender and the unit is rocks and minerals), and a few more I can't even remember right now.  We punched holes, stapled, stacked and now...we are ready.

I think.

Tomorrow it begins!

Counting Down

Yeah, yeah, yeah....I know, haven't been posting much but truly...how many of you want to hear about how my knitting is going and what I've been up to?  Let's be honest, there's always a lot more material for this blog when school is in session.

Which it will be on Friday!

Gosh almighty, it's almost scary to realize how FAST summer slid away from me.  Granted, we put in quite a few extra days to make up for all the snow days we had last year.  And in reality, we don't get that much of a summer, and especially not the legendary "three months off every summer", that people think we have.  Which makes me wonder..does anyone get three months off?  Anyone?  We get about eight weeks and it appears that for most of that I was taking in-service courses.

Believe it or not...I was already in my room and got it all set up by July 19th.  I suppose you can say I like to have everything prepared.  Mrs. Eagle and I spent quite a few hours - already - getting things ready for this year, including co-teaching an in-service on science notebooks (which had more non-science teachers there than science teachers - go figure).  We also did a quick 5 day trip up north to visit some friends, do some touristy things, and visit family.  But just in case you think we got off easy...we actually worked on this trip.  She drove, I read and took notes, and we planned a number of changes in our way of doing things.  We'll see how this all works out this year.

First day for teachers to report is Wednesday, but I'll probably be in the building tomorrow with Mrs. Eagle getting copies made of the mounds of paperwork that we send home.  I pity the parents.

A look back at summer...I didn't get nearly everything accomplished that I wanted to.  Never got started on the "knitted dogs" project (never even ordered the yarn) as I got sidetracked by another baby blanket and a lace scarf.  My garden is still a work in progress - a very dry work in progress at this point.  I didn't lose weight, but didn't gain any, and I've been walking about an hour a day.  I'll miss that.

I'll also miss naps.

Down to the Wire

So tomorrow is the first day of school.   Actually it's a half day, but who's quibbling?

And no, I do not know why we go a half day on a Friday, have a teacher in-service on Monday and the kids finally show up for a full day on Tuesday.  It doesn't make sense to me either.

Anyhow, I'm not sure if it's because this is my eighth first day of school, or because I finally got a bit more organized, or if I got started earlier, but I had my room set up and ready to go about three days ago.  I got the bulk of it done Friday of last week, but started going in every morning this week (to get back on the getting up at o-dark-thirty routine) which enabled me to get a lot more done.  No last minute copying, no last minute poster-hanging (I hate that part), no last minute anything.  So it's a bit weird because everything is ready to go.

Except we have no homeroom rosters.

Seriously.

I sarcastically suggested we line the kids up in the theater like you did as a kid when you chose teams on the playground and pick the kids we want in our homeroom. (Actually, now that I think of it, I kind of like that idea.)

I love our guidance department. They are rock stars. They are some of my best friends. So, it's not really fair that they get blamed for the whole scheduling problem issue because truly, it isn't their fault. It's technology. We use PowerSchool (which I usually love for the most part) but they did some changes over the summer and for some reason it has not been cooperating. At all.

First problem is that we've gone from three seventh grade teams to two seventh grade teams. Our numbers are down this year (which is weird because they are building apartments and subdivisions all over our zone but alas, no middle school kids. Perhaps they're all elementary.) And the eighth grade has gone from three full teams to two teams plus a "mini-team". Some of the eighth grade teachers are going to be teaching one class of seventh graders to reduce the class sizes. So, since Mrs. Eagle's team is closer to the eighth grade hall than my team is, her team should be getting about 30 or so more kids than my team (and these kids will be the ones that have one eighth grade teacher). Confused?

So, for some reason that no one can figure out, PowerSchool wants to schedule all new seventh graders onto my team. And from what the Guidance Goddess said, yesterday and today was Scheduling Hell as parents and kids were lined three deep trying to register for school.

And then there's the issue of balanced class sizes. Although we currently don't have homerooms, we can see some of the kids that are in our other classes. My class sizes are quite a bit bigger - for the most part - than last year. Let's see, 3rd period has 29, 4th period has 23, 5th period has 22, 6th period has 37 and 7th period has 17. (Yesterday 6th period had 42).

All of this will probably change by tomorrow. I can cram about 34 kids in my room, with 7 lab groups of 4, one lab group of 2, and 4 flying solo seats. It should be interesting to see how many show up, and how it all shakes out.

Oh boy!!!

One Down, One Hundred Seventy-Nine to Go!

We had our first half day of school on Friday. Don't even ask why we start with a half day, then have a weekend, then have a full week beginning Monday. I have no idea what the thinking is behind this plan. All I know is that at 7:05 Friday morning over a thousand kids showed up and we just prayed we had schedules for most of them.

The new system we've put into place for grades, scheduling and all sorts of cool things (PowerSchool) tanked on Thursday, but was up again on Friday morning. I think most of the guidance department was putting in 20 hour days just to make sure we had a smooth opening.

Those folks rock.

In the meantime, I was hoping I'd covered all the bases with my new team. I have one returning team member, Miss Reading, who will be starting her second year teaching. The others are Mr. Math who transferred from another building, Miss Language, a brand new teacher, and Mrs. Social Studies, who was on Mrs. Eagle's team last year. As a new team leader I was just hoping I wasn't forgetting anything.

We did have a bit of a case of nerves when Mr. Math lived the nightmare all teachers have. He woke up that morning and asked his wife (also a teacher) what time it was. The clock said 5:00 am so they had a bit more time. He didn't think that seemed right as it was a bit too light outside. He checked his watch and it said 6:00. I can only imagine the chaos that ensued as they both raced to get ready, get the baby ready, drop the baby off at the sitter, and power on to school. Mr. Math rolled in about 2 minutes before the buses unloaded and was a bit rattled, to say the least. Fortunately, he's a pro and everything was ready to go so there weren't any lasting problems.

We put all the seventh graders in the theater and each of us called out our homeroom class and marched them off to our rooms. My roster had shrunk from 37, to 32, then up to 35 by the time Friday morning arrived. The problem, apparently, is that the advanced math, reading, and language classes are 4th, 5th, and 6th periods. I teach 8th grade during 7th period, have planning 1st and 2nd, so the only period they can take science is 3rd. So, most of these kids are advanced, but that also means they can be quite a talkative bunch. In any case, 29 showed up, so I did have enough seats for everyone although it meant I had to use isolation seats just to get a kid in a chair.

In the past, we've kept our homerooms for about 2 hours, then have them rotate through their schedules for 10 minute periods until it's time to release them to go home. This year it was decided that we'd keep our homeroom kids for the entire time.

I don't know how you elementary teachers do it. The thought of keeping 29 7th graders busy for a solid 3 hours and 30 minutes is daunting.

So, we handed out the ream of paperwork that needs to go home. And went over it piece by piece, and reminded them which needed to be signed and returned and which needed to be kept. I figure half of it will end up in the trash. I was astounded at the number of free and reduced meal letters I sent out. Well over one third of my class was apparently on free and reduced last year.

I did a PowerPoint on important things like lockers, and behavior, and lunch, and behavior, and supplies, and behavior, and so forth and so on. We took a bathroom break and I realized, as they were marching back to the room, that I have about 20 boys in this class. We did a group activity. We did a learning style inventory worksheet (which they thought was pretty cool). We did a word search and we did a vanity license plate drawing....and we kept them busy until it was time to send them to the buses.

And we waved them goodbye, went out to have our last sit-down restaurant lunch for a long time, and realized that it went pretty well.

We had seats for everyone.

All but four kids - in the entire school - had their schedules.

The system didn't crash.

Every kid knew what bus they got on to go home.

And no one cried or threw up.

Success.