I am Someone

Here it is. The easel. THE easel.

I consider myself MORE than lucky to be the recipient of such a gift from the school. While I really had no say in the matter - our amazing reading team insists on an easel in every room - I am grateful to one (unnamed)teacher who did not report her broken easel last year. Thus, I have been provided with this piece of magnificence.

Visits are free, but to grope and take a photograph with the subject will cost.

Real world

I read A Day's Work by Eve Bunting today with my students. Asked students what they thought was going to happen on the page when Ben found out they pulled up all the plants and left the weeds.

a. Police will come.

b. They will get arrested.

c. He will leave them there and not pay them anything or drive them home.

d. Police will come and shoot them.

Oy.

What Writing Feels Like

I asked my students to show me what writing felt like to them. The responses were everything I hoped for, but nothing I expected.

"Writing is flexible. My brain feels loose."

"Writing makes my blood shake and I feel excited." (He's doing a Rain Dance)

"I feel like I'm in control and everything done in a certain

way creates something cool... like a cartwheel."

Writing Writing Writing

My class is writing a morning message to the whole school. We first shared some things that it should include, looking at our morning messages from this week that are hanging around the room. Then they broke off into pairs (or by themselves) and created drafts of a morning message. Coming back together, we shared and constructed the sentences, and then the students wrote those sentences on our chart paper. I loved some of their "words of wisdom" for the other, especially younger, students.

Clearly, our PE specialists did a mighty fine job in embedding this grain of knowledge.

I love this encouragement: "You guys are outstanding kids..."

Heartfelt advice.

From Dusk til Dawn

Sidenotes

1. My Grandma took a picture of me on my first day of school - - - for the 2nd time in my life.
I hate to ruin that comment, but I do have to say that I'm pretty sure that she either cut my head off in the picture or that her thumb covered most of the view. But it was a moment.

2. Wonderful cohort member interviewed at my school. They have to, just have to, hire her. She'd just fit right in... even on the 2nd week of school. I will gladly never laminate anything ever again if it means we can afford her. C'mon HR... big money, big money...

3. Pink Corded Phone for the first time. I will always remember this conversation for some odd reason. Of all our conversations, that seems hard to imagine.

4. My Grandma then came to my school to see my room after dismissal. Aw, so cute... but then I put her right to work - a la "Hey, thanks for coming! Grab that stapler..."

5. Spaghetti. Spaghetti. Spaghetti. I shared this with Tree a while ago.. but I have this completely odd urge to type the word spaghetti every time I write in the address bar. I'm in spaghetti therapy. With meatballs on top.

Day One

I promised myself that I would blog about this day.

Well, Self, here it is. What do you want from me? I did as you asked and I prepared myself and I memorized student names, laughed, joked, and began to familiarize myself with my new students. What? What's that you say?

Yes, I said MY new students.

I walked them down the hall like a mother duck prances around with her new ducklings. Today is a great day to do that, by the way, seeing how they are all in First Day of School Comas. I think they can talk, but I'm not so sure. Wait wait, yeah, they have to talk. I mean, someone would have told me if I had a class of non-talkers, right? OMG what if this is like a big initiation thing where the other teachers bribe them to not talking for a few days, and then WHAM they explode with booming voices on, say, Thursday. Yes, that sounds like a Thursday thing to happen. That is sure to make Fox 5.

On my first day of being a REAL teacher I had my 21 minus 2 absent students for a whopping 2 hours. TWO hours. Today was an ART day - which we were all super excited about - so I only have students until about 10:20. Then I'm off to lunch and planning! Marvelous day!

I had this big puffed up kind of feeling for most of the day. I looked around the room at them and just felt the world stand still for just a moment. Just a moment while I took it all in. Then, of course, a red squishy die flew across the room and I was pulled out of my This Is Going To Be Awesome World.

Self, I even managed to get everything done that was on my list. Granted, the moment before the students arrived (20 minutes early, eek!) I pushed back the fire drill procedure talk until tomorrow. Thank goodness no Kindergartners (or their teachers) spontaneously burst into flames - we would have had no idea where to go or how to get there in the safest manner.

Tomorrow.... ah, good ol' tomorrow... now YOU will be the true test. Once I get through tomorrow I will be a teacher for two whole days. Yes, yes... THEN I will be a professional.