The holidays were a whirlwind, but so fun.
I spent the last four days before school started laying on the couch!
Then, I entered a new classroom in a new school full of a new group of students. I was more nervous than I thought I would be. I've done this 6 times already, but this "first day" was a little more nerve racking than usual.
Once we got settled into the day, I got into the swing of things and the day was over before I knew it. I got a new routine established quickly and didn't waste anytime learning how to sleep in later.
The biggest adjustment has been the time. I'm on a three person team when I've always been on a four person team. The way this works is I teach math, another lady teaches Language Arts, and a guy teaches Science and Social Studies together. So, I have three classes instead of four, which means my classes are an hour and a half instead of just an hour.
Usually in a block schedule like this, you only have the students for a semester. You have more time with them in each class period, but have to cover everything in half a year. For me, I have more time each day and have them for the full year.
Did I mention that I'm also on the AIG team?
That means I have two AIG classes and one standard class. The other team is our EC, Exceptional Children's, team. In Durham we could never group our teams like this because let's just say the kids who have a tougher time learning and don't really like school are really good at
AIG classes tend to be full of students who are hard workers, enjoy school, and actually want to do school work. This isn't true 100% of the time; after my 2nd year of teaching, I didn't care if I ever taught another AIG class because they were so bad. However, the group I have this year really is great. They are smart and hard workers! However, that means they fly through any activity I plan.
The other day we were reviewing for a test. Since I know my classes are a lot longer, I planned more. I planned to do two activities that used to take students a good two days to complete with some work left over. That's over 2 hours worth of work...or so I thought. The first part was a rotation where I post questions around the room and they get to walk around and solve them. The second part was completing a study guide. I let them work in partners because that usually adds time to an activity. I thought surely I had plenty planned. My first class got started and literally worked the.whole.time. I walked around trying to find someone off task. I couldn't even find a group that wasn't talking about math. What is this place?!
It's amazing how much work you can get done when you actually do your work. They finished the rotation and the study guide with time to spare.
I don't know if it's the fact they are 6th graders and haven't learned how to be middle schoolers yet (ha!) or if it's because they are the AIG class, or a combination, but I was shocked.
So then a few days later I planned to teach a new concept. I don't like to give notes the entire time so I planned for about 20 minutes of notes with two activities and had a third activity ready to go just in case they finished early. That day we spent the whole time on notes...
I'm only two weeks in...give me a little longer and maybe, just maybe I'll figure this time management thing out for a block schedule with AIG kids.
It snowed today! We had a work day, but that didn't slow them down from calling off school. It started snowing at 10:15. At 10:20 my principal came over the intercom telling us we could leave. At 11:15 we got an email from the district saying teachers were officially released at 1pm. It's a good thing, look how much snow we got...
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