New Year, New Plans, New Faces

Yesterday I went back to school for our first official teacher work day of the 2010-2011 school year.  It was great seeing everyone--I love the people I work with!  Everyone's so friendly and happy--best work environment ever!

I got quite a bit done yesterday--we only had meetings in the morning and over lunch.  The afternoon was free to work on whatever needed to be worked on.  Today, I was in meetings until 2:00 and I only stayed until 3.  I wanted to stay later and work on a few more things, but I needed to go to the teacher store (i.e. the "Oh-my-gosh-I-NEED-everything-in-here store") before heading home.

I'm excited about this school year, but it will be different.  Me and my 1st grade co-teacher (see this post for an explanation) sat down Wednesday afternoon and started outlining how we wanted the classroom to be run.  The kids were divided by the admin into 1A and 1B, so we decided that the morning welcome time (morning meeting), read alouds, and dismissal could be done separately in our own rooms.  The rest of the day we split responsibilities.  I'll be teaching math, Bible, social studies, and doing the small group activity for Language Arts.  She'll be teaching the rest of Language Arts, science, computer lab, and handwriting.  We had to think through where they would keep things like incomplete work folders, pencil boxes, books, etc.  I think we've got a good system figured out.  We'll see how the kids do with it when they get here next Wednesday!

We also planned out the first three days of school together.  The first day, we're going to keep the kids separated for most stuff, but then starting the second day we'll introduce them to the other classroom.  It took a long time to plan those three days!  But I think once we get into regular planning for regular days, it won't be so involved!  It will be nice only to have to plan for half the subjects, though!

I keep looking at the names of the kids who we'll be teaching this year.  They're not my kids yet.  The group of kids I taught in kindergarten and 1st grade are my kids.  I know them inside and out:  all their little quirks and habits, how they'll react to different stuff, what they'll love, what they'll hate, how they learn...all that.  I know I'm not a parent, and I'm not pretending like I know exactly how they feel when they hand their kids over to a new teacher, but...wow.  I so want to sit down with the 2nd grade teachers and tell them everything about these kids.  I guess I feel like I can identify a little better with parents who want to tell you everything up front about their kids.  But I know the teachers in 2nd grade are amazingly talented and wonderful and my kids will do just fine. 

OK, so I get a little attached to the kiddos in my class.  I'm with them nearly 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, nine months a year!  Sorry that I grow to love them so much ;-)  I'll miss my kids from last year a lot.  But I know in a couple months I'll be completely smitten (most days, haha!) with this new group.

So bring on the new year and new faces!