First Day of School

I am lucky enough to do my first year of teaching at a school that I worked at last year as an Urban Teaching Fellow (not to be confused with the NYC Teaching Fellows, which is what I currently am - I know, I've been around the block, eh?).

I went back to school last Thursday, which was the first "official" day of school. Other teachers had been in since that Monday, but since I'd been told earlier this summer that I wouldn't have my own classroom because I was only teaching one section of ELA (English Language Arts), I didn't rush to get back. Of course, when I went in on Thursday I was informed that I do have my own classroom (the library) and I realized I had better hurry my butt up there to start cleaning and making my room ready for a loving, nurturing and intelligent learning environment.

So, two and a half days later I finally got the library relatively classroom-looking, and I'm feeling fairly confident.

Tomorrow, September 4th, is the first day for the kids. They arrive at 8:00am. I will be at the school when the doors are unlocked, at 7:00am, Starbucks in hand, ready to rev (how do you spell that word??) myself up and start labeling my bins for Writer's Notebooks, etc, which I have yet to do. Then my homeroom partner and I will go downstairs and pick the kids up from the cafeteria and bring them upstairs to homeroom. We will all be together all day, for orientation. We will be doing exciting things: filling out blue cards (contact info), filling out lots of thrilling paperwork, handing out supplies (it's a new thing for my school this year - we are giving supplies to each student for $15. This is to create uniformity and clarity in organization of classwork, etc.), doing "two truths and a lie", playing charades for the school's 12 non-negotiable rules, and all kinds of other housekeeping activities. Should be a blast (really? well, maybe not. we'll see!).

If I'm not an empty shell of myself tomorrow, I will write more and let you all know how it went!