First week of school

It's a very late post tonight, I know. I'm sorry. I considered not posting, but then decided that I had to. I've had a post every single day for more than a month now, and I don't want to get out of the habit.

As you know, I just finished my first week of school. Wow. What a week. It went pretty well, but I'm so glad it's over! I always forget over the summer how mentally draining it is to be working with kids all day long.

Plus the first week is always crazy with kids being added to classes and then taken out of classes. Right now, my classes are ginormous. I have 30 seniors in my first hour class, and 24 in my third hour class. (Twenty-four isn't bad, actually, it's a pretty decent class size.) My block fourth, fifth and sixth hours has 30, 29, and 27 kids. I just agreed to pick up a sixth class and give up my prep period, but that will only be for a semester and my principal agreed to limit it to 15 kids and / or give me a para-educator. If he goes over 15, he promised to stay below 20, and guaranteed a para-ed.

We shall see. Counselors have let me know that I will most likely have kids in that class on Tuesday, but they will trickle in all week. I should be good to go by Friday. I'm actually sort of excited about this class for several reasons. First, it's a SMALL class. Those are always fun and really productive. Second, I taught this class after school last year, and very few kids actually came. I couldn't hold attendance or credit over their heads, it was purely voluntary. Now because it is during the school day and we've arranged for them to earn credit, they have to come. That makes my job much easier. Third, the extra money will be nice. I still have two more years until my car is paid off, but we only owe about one and a half year's worth of payments. I would like to be able to double or even triple the payments and have it paid off by the end of the school year.

The downside to picking up this class is that I lose my prep period which is VERY useful. Plus, my block teaching partners are sort of annoyed because we have a common prep period and planned to meet more regularly this year. Oh well. I can't get too worked up over it because I promised the Assistant Superintendent last spring that if he could fund it, I would teach it. He apparently found the funding, and now my principal is getting it all set up. Another downside to teaching this class is that in addition to all of my classes, I already am involved in about a million other things at SHS. I'm not sure where I'll find the time to do everything I need to do.

But, I'm working on routines and being more disciplined. As evidenced by the fact that though it's late, I still managed to get a post done today! I'm trying to think of a topic for tomorrow now...

Good night!