How Lucky I Am

I was reading a fellow Drake blogger's post just a few minutes ago. I believe he is currently doing Teach America or something similar to that. I know that I am very fortunate to have a job at Waukee, which is worlds away from my student teaching experience in Des Moines, where I have students who care and parents who care about what their students are learning. I am even more fortunate that my kids come to school everyday with the supplies they need, and are for the most part compliant with directions and things asked of them. So far, the worst thing I've had to deal with is the fact that students consistently "forget" things in their lockers or choose not to listen to instructions in class, and therefore ask me repeatedly what they are supposed to do. I have all the resources I need, and if I don't have something I think I need, I can talk to the office and they will get it for me. What a wonderful way for a teacher to start out!

School has been great! I'm slowly getting into a routine, and figuring out where I need to be during my planning times so I can actually get things done since other teachers and classes are in my room at all hours of the day. I "graded" my first batch of papers today. They aren't even for a real grade, they are "baseline" writing samples so we can see where the students start and where they are at the end of the year. I must say, for the most part I'm pretty happy with them. Perhaps it is because I'm grading based on the 6+1 traits of writing, and those are pretty broad categories. But, that's good because it helps me grade based on what that student can do, differentiation, rather than what I think the paper should look like, and I'm not focusing so much on spelling and grammar, which is what I tend to do a lot.

I do have some very needy students in some of my classes, so I'm going to have to figure out how to scaffold and build their knowledge from the ground up, so that all can succeed. It will be a bit challenging, but I believe that it will all work out, and I have some awesome teachers around me to support me in figuring out what to teach and how to teach it.

Staff meeting tomorrow and school pictures on Thursday. I'm not going to lie, I'm excited about the "long" weekend.

First Days of School

Yesterday was the first day of school! It actually went pretty well. I didn't really have any glitches with schedules or anything like that. Some students are still having trouble with their lockers, so that's making some of them late, but that's really ok. I have really good kids in my classes and so far it's been a lot of fun. Each class definitely has a different personality though. My morning class is very very quiet, while my last class of the day is very talkative. My lunch class is in between. I think some of them are still getting used to me. It's been a lot of fun so far!

I still feel like I need another week or so to just sit down and go through all of the files that the last teacher left me. I have so much stuff and it's in an order that doesn't really make sense to me, and I can't really find anything, so it's been kind of a mess. I hope I can use my planning time in the next few weeks to sift through all of that, otherwise I'm going to be spending even more time after school than I already am! I'll get it figured out.

I am amazed at how nice and helpful all of the staff at Waukee are. Anytime I need anything, I just have to ask the person that's right beside me and I will get help! It's wonderful! I'm slowly learning the ins and outs of things.

I'm really looking forward to this school year! I think we're going to have a lot of fun and hopefully I'll be able to teach them something :)