Autumn approaches

Ahhh, what a relaxing summer (at least after the statistics course I was taking mercifully finished on July 15th -- I passed!). The first day of school for kids around here is this Tuesday or Wednesday for most schools, and I'm so relieved not to have to worry about it. As my sister said, "Just think, the next time you're preparing for the first day of school, it will be as the school psychologist!" Yep, I started my graduate school courses in school psychology last week! One week down, 155 to go. But who's counting? ;)

In my old school's typical lack of attention to detail, my old work e-mail account was never shut down. I've been logging in from time to time over the summer just to see if anything interesting is going on. That's how I found out my supervisor (the special ed director) quit. My co-workers and I had a feeling in the spring that she was interviewing for another job. She kept being out for part of the day at very specific times, and once she couldn't even go with me to a professional development workshop we had signed up for. Now that she's left, they've literally had a complete turnover of all administrators since last year's first day of school: the principal, both the middle school and lower school vice principals, the special ed director, and the person who was the equivalent of the dean are all gone.

A few minutes ago I logged in for the first time in a few weeks, and found these reactions to the new schedule which was just shared with teachers a few days ago:

"It is difficult to integrate English/history with the arts every single week. It should be less frequently and for a single period instead of a double period.
We have been told for the last two weeks to write 45-minute lessons. Now our schedules are double-blocks every day. We were also never told about the constant integration periods we would need to plan for.
Some teachers have class all day without prep time.
It is completely unnecessary to have 80-minute blocks with each class almost every day.
160 - 240 minutes straight through makes us ineffective teachers. Students are completely unable to sit through 160 minutes of intense instruction in core classes.
Each core class should have single periods every day with only one double period a week.
I am double-booked with two classes for the same period on Thursdays.
This schedule is a complete disaster for all. We need to completely re-work it."

Yikes! I cannot imagine having the same sixth, seventh, or eighth grade class for 240 minutes straight. That's four hours! I wouldn't have liked that as a student, let alone as a middle school teacher.

Is it bad to admit that after reading all those comments, I promptly sprang up and did the dance of joy because I DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH ANY OF IT!?!? ;)

1 day down. 179 to go.

Today was the first day of school for the students! 48 sixth graders, 48 seventh graders, and 48 eighth graders graced us with their presence today. The vice principal said it was the smoothest first day of school he's experienced. My take? These kids are LOUD. Advisory period turned into a "make labels for your locker and socialize" period this afternoon, since we still don't have the advisory curriculum, and the din that 24 seventh graders can make is amazing, really. It just surprises me how unafraid of adult authority some of them are (completely unlike me when I was their age). I mean, it's only THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL and I already had to give a seventh grader a warning for throwing a little piece of paper while the lead teacher was talking! The seventh and eighth grade math teacher has taught for 14 years, and even she had a hard time getting them all to simply stay quiet and pay attention. She's going to assign seats tomorrow, separating a couple of the especially talky groups, so that should help. One of the teachers from last year said that this year's seventh and eighth graders are used to getting away with talking whenever they want, because for a couple of their subjects last year they ended up with substitute after substitute due to teacher turnover, and their other teachers had given up, I guess, and just talked over them.

The sixth graders aren't like that, though. They're all brand new to the school -- we didn't have a fifth grade last year -- so they were much more nervous than the older kids. Plus none of them know each other enough yet to chat too much. ;) The sixth grade teachers are wonderful with them, too. Although one little girl I met this morning was funny. Her first question to me was, "Do we ever have dress down days?" She was disappointed when I told her no ("It's so boring to look like everyone else!").

As the special ed teacher for half the sixth grade and all of seventh, I'm supposed to "push in" to classes as much as possible, since we have a math specialist and a reading specialist to pull them out for extra small group instruction in those subjects. It's kind of weird, though, because I was told to just make my own schedule, but I couldn't even see the kids IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) until last Thursday when they finally arrived out of storage, and none of the other teachers even got finalized schedules themselves until yesterday. And in the three weeks of professional development we just had, we were given surprisingly little time for planning together.

So today I basically just observed and helped out in the seventh grade math and language arts classes, and the sixth grade math class. Even though I wasn't lecturing the whole class, like the lead teachers were, I went around and answered kids' questions, tried to make sure they stayed on task, etc. I barely saw our principal all day, but our vice principal was awesome, out and about in seemingly all the classrooms, an active presence. But then I felt weird because when I caught him to ask him a question (this was after he happened to come in to two different classrooms and saw me helping out), he asked how things were going, I said things seemed to be going pretty smoothly, and then he told me, "Don't be afraid to jump in."

I was kind of like, "Oh." Because to me, I *had* been jumping in. And today was fairly similar in all the classes -- going over the rules, the supplies needed, the syllabus, etc. So on the way home, I brooded. I like him as a vice principal, and I want him to think I'm going a good job. By Friday I hope to figure out when each teacher's planning periods are so I can schedule times to sit down with them and see what we can do together for our "special students."

Tomorrow is our first morning of whole-school tai chi in the wellness room (don't call it a gym; it's a "wellness room." ;) According to the wellness teachers, some of the too-cool-for-school seventh and eighth graders have been copping an attitude about it, but I'm looking forward to it, myself.