Week One in Retrospect.

“If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.”

Ignacio Estada

The room at Kennedy Middle School that has been designated as mine is beginning to take shape into the form of a classroom. Well, I guess it has always looked like a classroom..but not the classroom I have always imagined. Last  week I spent the majority of my time organizing the closet space, shelves, desk, and file cabinets. After logging about 57 hours (including working on a Saturday) my room was  presentable for the students to come...but I was not nearly prepared enough...or so I thought.

Monday morning, August 16 I woke up at 5:45am, put on my brand new "first day of teaching career" outfit and made the mistake of asking Justin how I looked. He decided it was probably a little too colorful for a bunch of "behavior problemed" middle schoolers, so I changed. (Probably for the best.) The lime green pants and the swirl-y brown shirt probably would not have made the impressions I was hoping to make (INTIMIDATING). I arrived at school at 6:35am and did more neurotic planning and hanging of last minute posters getting a more than a little anxious to meet my students.

But the time did come....my class consists of 20 boys. 5'8-6'0 tall boys. I teach one girl all day. She is such a delight, however she is boy crazy. I can see this becoming an issue in the near future....oh middle schoolers.

Monday went well.  I intimidated the smaller boys and made the larger ones smile, which is all I could really do with them...so Monday went well enough. After dodging "how old are you" questions and "you look like a student" comments, by the end of the day I was exhausted.

After a long day, I was confident I would sleep excellent that night but MAN I was wrong. I began tossing and turning around 3am with a stomach ache and feeling a little nauseous. Not something that I wanted to start the morning before the second day of school. I went to school and attempted to just suck it up, but I didn't even make it to 8:00am. I had officially been attacked by the stomach bug...but this wasn't just the 24 hour bug, NO SIR, it lasted 48 hours. For these two days I couldn't keep anything down, I was weak, and my stomach hurt. Poor Justin was a trooper. He put up with my wimpering, complaining and begging for more gatorade to keep hydrated. Good Husband!  

Thursday was spent emphasizing procedures that I attempted to establish on Monday that the sub had kind of overlooked. Friday was definitely rewarding, though.

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Friday reminded me of why I went into teaching in the first place. I have a class full of signifacantly below grade level students who are never interest in work or anything most teachers teach because they usually don't know how to do it. But today was fun. The students actually said "MAN!" (in disappointment) when the 3rd period bell rang for them to leave my classroom. All the way down the hall I could hear them talking about how fun Math was today and how glad they were that I was back! Oh it made me feel good!

Week one is now complete. It is far more stressful than I had originally anticipated, but completely worth every minute.