School days

Middle school and ninth grade stduents came back to school yesterday. My school splits seventh grade students by gender and this year I am teaching two classes (first and second periods) of seventh grade boys. I am mostly excited about this. My first period is awesome, although I had some sleepers today (hard to yell at them when I want to go to sleep too - the first week is rough) and second period is small and mostly good, although there are a few talkers that I am already working with.

We have a new classroom management system that I like and so far, so good. It requires more time during instruction, but I'd rather be doing that then spending that time yelling or breaking up shouting matches, etc. Because you teachers know that I sure wouldn't be spending that time teaching. Today we talked a lot about respect (not name calling, not using slurs, etc) and how to get the teacher's attention appropriately (not snapping or calling out or jumping in your seat). It will be a long road, but when isn't it?

In addition to the two Civics classes, I also co-teach a 45 minute Capstone class to 30 seventh grade boys at the end of the day. Because our school is not designed for classes to hold so many students, we meet in the cafeteria. It is decidely not a good meeting space. Way too many distractions, plus the kitchen staff is getting ready for dinner so the whole place is kind of warm and smells like food (which SO does not work for me). The class meets M-Th at the end of the day and is meant to teach study and life skills. It's a good idea, so we'll see how it goes.

Next Tuesday we welcome back all of the students and I will start working with the seniors twice a day. I have eight seniors in my regular Govt/Econ class and five students in my AP Govt class. I am all about small classes, but that's a little much. A few kids didn't pass 11th grade, a few got pulled and one moved out of town so the class is much smaller than expected (I left thinking I would have six in AP and fifteen in regular...oops). I am still excited though - I really do love teaching those courses and I have a bunch of changes to implement this year. Plus it is just easy to be excited when the year is new.

And finally, because my body doesn't like to make things easy for me, I am slowly falling apart - for no apparent reason. Last week I got a really bad sore throat and while I can now swallow again, it is still painful/scratchy and now I am also really congested. Also, for the last month or so I have been getting hit with waves of being really hot and really cold, which is no fun for anyone. For instance, this morning, I taught with my hair up and my sleeves rolled up, but now I have my hair down and a jacket on. Finally, my body is just really tired. It's easy to forget how exhausting teaching is, Even if you're not teaching every minute of the day, you are still on your feet a ton, plus you're crouching and walking and talking loudly and raising your hand and doing all of these things to get/keep the kids' attention and you are "on" for the entire day. No matter how tired I was this morning, I had to be happy and energetic from the minute I walked into the building until the minute third period started. Now I'm okay to let go until passing periods and then my last class, but it's still a tough gig.

Here's the thing though: with all of the exhaustion and anxiety and such, I am still really glad to be back. Man, I love school! It's geeky, I know, but it's true. And besides, no one ever said I was cool. (Ha!)