Saturday, September 4, 2010

One Day at a Time



 
The first three days of school are over.

My kids are awesome.

But dang.  I am so tired.

After hours of planning with my other 1st grade co-teacher we found out the day before school started that we had reached the magical 28 children.  Just enough to officially split us into two independent classes and gain one T.A. to share between the classes.  All our planning, our daily schedule we had developed, our system of organizing materials, all our time and efforts went straight out the window.  We suddenly went from being on top of things and ready for the first days to feeling like we needed another week to re-plan everything.

There were a few moments during that day-before-the-first-day-of-school as I was trying to redo as much as I could in just a few hours where I got that huge sinking feeling in my stomach and felt for a second like I was going to throw up.  I knew I couldn't redo everything in that one afternoon.  So I just focused on the first day of school.  I wanted it to go smoothly for the kids and I knew I would have this lovely long weekend to do all the re-planning that needed to happen.  The first day went pretty well and I spent the afternoon looking at our plans for days two and three and redoing them where needed.

All in all, things have been frustrating, stressful, and sometimes so ridiculous you just have to laugh.  The kids seemed to have a good first week, though, and that's what really matters. 



I spent this morning redoing our daily schedules.  Normally, each 1st grade class has their own T.A. to help with our Language Arts block and teach Bible.  Since there are so few kids this year, the school board only approved one T.A. for both classes to share.  That means that we had to have Bible at different times and coordinate our Language Arts block so our T.A. would only be needed in one classroom at a time.

It was quite complicated.

I finally managed to work out a schedule that I think will work.  We'll see.

There's still more to do, but at least some stuff is getting straightened out.  Never a dull moment :-P

Oh, and P.S.
Do you know how I know that school has really started?

I went 11.5 hours on Friday without going to the bathroom.  5:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., baby.

Back in the saddle again...

2 comments:

  1. Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing off the leather straps, isn't it?

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  2. I haven't had time to read this until today. I love your classroom, especially the green curtains! Sorry that your plan for the year changed around so much, but does this mean you'll be able to use more of what you created last year??

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