Oh School...

I've been back for two days now and I'm happy to report that I'm doing pretty well! Yes, the heat was on till this morning, making yesterday absolutely unbearable. Yes, I have 29 students registered right now...could drop OR could go higher. Yes, I don't have enough desks or chairs. Yes, we don't have enough reading materials for all these kiddos so they're going to have to share. Yes, none of my computers are still loaded with all the programs I used last year so I'm going to have to spend hours reloading them, and yes, my room is so crowded (even without the new desks), it's really hard to even move around.

However...

My team is working really well together this year. Not sure what the difference is: maybe we finally realized how important it is to help each other out, instead of isolating ourselves. Anyway, we've split up a lot of the work this fall making an easier ride for all of us. It's really nice.

Another nice change is how clean my room was when I came back. This is the first year in 6 years that I didn't have to spend 2 full days just unpacking, cleaning, organizing, moving furniture, etc. There were a couple bulletin boards I had to create, a few posters to draw and a couple boxes to unpack and that's it! Instead of doing manual labor, I was able to sit and create a few behavior plans and start creating lessons...which is what a classroom teacher SHOULD be spending the first few days of school doing!

We have all day Wednesday in our classrooms and we have a bunch of meetings scheduled and then 1/3 of the kids come on Thurs, 1/3 on Friday, and 1/3 on Monday. Then the first "Full" day of school is Tuesday. We spend Th, F and M doing assessments and tests to see where the kiddos are at. I'll be getting quite a few who speak no English at all, so that will be interesting. I'm curious to see how this bunch of kiddos compare to previous years...

Oh, and by the way: Maelin is doing great at Sandra's house. We have a new baby over there: Baby Carson, the 8 month old son of a friend of mine. She LOVES playing with him...when she's not outside playing in the dirt. Today when I picked her up, Mae was playing in the dirt in the front yard and was filthy. She was using a beer cap to scoop dirt onto a toy car. Completely absorbed and could have cared less I was there. Makes me happy she has such a fun time while I'm working...

Thanks for all the phone calls and emails: Mae and I are going fine!