Monday, September 13, 2010

First Impressions of the 2010-2011 School Year

Today was the first day of the second week of school, the first full week of school. Last week was really, really tough. On the first day of school I was in bed before 8 pm! The rest of the week wasn't much better, but I was able to stay up until 10 or so on Thursday night.

This year I am an official full-time teacher. Here's my schedule:

7:45-8:07... 8th grade homeroom
8:11-9:38... 8th grade Fitness Fun
9:43-10:25... 7th grade PE
10:30-11:11... 7th grade PE
11:15-12:42... 9th grade health

Fitness Fun is a class that my co-worker Lori created a few years ago. The class is really neat - a lot of activities and field trips that other PE classes don't get to do. I'm starting off with disc golf, which will culminate with a few field trips to the nearest disc golf course. Other activities include: karate, tai chi, spinning at the YMCA, bowling, xcountry skiing, snowshoeing, yoga. I'm also going to attempt to do rock climbing and curling. There's so much that I can do and if the kids would ever shut up, I'd be able to do it all! This year's 8th graders are last year's 7th graders and they are super chatty. In one class I have all but 2 girls; in the other class, all but 3. It's a tough crowd.

7th grade PE is pretty easy. This year's 7th graders are super nice, good listeners, and they wear their sneakers every day! I can only hope that they'll be good fitness fun students next year.

This year's 9th graders are kind of a rough crowd. So far it's not too bad, but they like to make comments all the time. I'm going to have to start kicking some kids out to make a point. We are starting with nutrition and we just started SuperSize Me today. They're more or less attentive, but the sound is so low that if anyone talks, you miss things.

I'm frustrated with the fact that I don't have a computer in my health classroom. The math teacher leaves her laptop and the sound just isn't the best. I have four whole days' worth of a video on AIDS and it's going to be a long four days if the kids can't hear it. The computer is hooked up to the projector on the ceiling. I never had a problem last year with the desktop computer.

Tomorrow night is open house and I think I'm going to dig it. Last year everyone followed their child's schedule, but this year each grade is doing something different. Why do they have to do that when it completely leaves out the specialists? So Jodi, Lori, and I are going to hang out in our office and if someone wants to visit us, they can. Otherwise, we can get some work done. I'm going to see how many discs I need to order for disc golf and then correct some health homework.

Our first long weekend is Oct 21-24, which is Education Minnesota's professional conference. (Formerly MEA weekend, so we still call it that.) I can't wait!

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