School

We've officially been in school (with students) for a week now, and I'M EXHAUSTED!
I've realized that there's a lot of "forgetting" involved in teaching (maybe so that we'll come back year after year to do it all again!). I forget EVERY YEAR how much energy it takes to teach. I also forget how EARLY I should be going to bed, and how EARLY I have to get up to get ready to go to work.

Things are going well, so far, this year. I'm still "babysitting" (providing prep) for kindergarten and 1st graders, and I ALSO forget how YOUNG, and SCARED, and...YOUNG...the entering kindergartners are. I've forgotten that they don't know how to walk in a line from point "A" to point "B", and that if you tell the first person in line to "walk over there", the second and third and fourth and ninth and eighteenth person ALSO need to be told to do so... I FORGET that they cry because they miss their mommies and daddies and pets. I FORGET that some have had a gazillion books read to them and know how to listen, while others have never HAD a book read to them before and have NO CONCEPT of what it means to listen. Oy!

The rest of my day is spent planning, and organizing, and charting out how my year is going to work. It has been LOVELY to have just a couple of classes a day, and LOTS of time to prepare lessons, work on "library business", and get stuff organized and redone without having to stay for HOURS after school. I wanted to make sure that people didn't think I was GOOFING OFF down in the media center, so I've already seen all of the second grades and most of the third grades for "library orientation". 45 minutes of stories, review, and library checkout to get the year started...it's been CRAZY BUSY, but it's also been fun to do things the way they SHOULD be done...the way I've always WANTED them to be done.

In other school related news: I FINALLY get to make my "this is how the media center will work this year" presentation to the staff on Wednesday. I've had a GAZILLION questions from them that could have (and would have) been answered by now, if the principal hadn't taken all of the meeting time for his stuff, and I'd been able to present it at the opening days meeting, as scheduled. All classroom checkouts would now be scheduled, teachers would be using the table area and the story step area for classroom activities, and things would be up and running...but...at present aren't. Oy again!

Other than that small glitch, it really IS starting out to be a wonderful year. For the first time since I began teaching at this school, I'm optimistic, and think that I really will FINALLY start making a difference in the educational growth of our students!

Hope this finds YOU all doing well with YOUR jobs, FORGETTING what you need to so that YOU'LL go back again and again, and that YOUR jobs are evolving in positive ways too!