Oh hey! I haven't seen you in a few months. I guess that's mostly my fault... I was supposed to be posting and reviewing some stuff, but I decided to go dark this summer. In fact I didn't even touch my laptop all summer long. I didn't go to any staff developments, which I'm sure I will regret once the school year gets on and I'll have to scramble to get the necessary hours. This summer it was just me and Netflix.
Monday was pretty good, I got to see a solar eclipse which I can now cross off my bucket list. Met most of my students and had a pretty decent day. Got to talk about summer with my students and what all they did. Did the first day of school ritual and talked about rules and expectations.
- Oh hey, important side note, if you're going to do rules and expectations with your students I suggest you have the students come up with the rules. Now don't do the thing where they are in charge of coming up with everything, because they will take advantage of that. How I do it is I tell them I have 3 rules: Respect me as the teacher, Respect your fellow classmates, and Respect the classroom. Then instead of them coming up with rules that favor them I ask the question "What does it look like to respect me/each other/the classroom? and then turn their statements into things that they should and shouldn't do. They still technically come up with the rules, but it's all things that you're in control of. Then you need to post it somewhere in the room, and refer back to it when they need reminders. If you want to see how I did it check the link below
Tuesday I started my classwork and was glad to see that students brought most of their materials and even brought their homework back from the day before. If you expect them to do homework every night you gotta start from day one. It doesn't have to be much, mine was literally one addition and one subtraction problem. AND YOU HAVE TO CHECK IT!!!! If they think you won't check it, they won't do it. Gotta set the precedent early.
Wednesday was decent. Students started to bring in their "Extra Credit Supplies". I gave them a list of things that they needed to have with them everyday: folder, journal, paper, pencil, the usual stuff. Then for extra credit they could bring in a pack of printer paper, tissues, hand sanitizer or dry erase markers. They really responded to that and I'm off to a good start so far, I don't think I'll need dry erase markers until I decide to retire at this point! The students were fine, but you could tell with the adults that something weird was going on. Living on the gulf coast for all your life you kind of get a feeling of when we're due for a storm. I made the stupid mistake of saying at the end of the school year that we hadn't had a storm since Ike in 2008 and that we'd probably get a storm this summer. Too bad Harvey didn't listen and decided to wait until school started to make an appearance.
Thursday was awash in uncertainty. Students still didn't know anything about the storm, and the unspoken rule is if they don't know DON'T TELL THEM! Was a pretty normal day, except we're all talking about the school districts around us that are cancelling school for Friday and Monday and how we're still scheduled to come in tomorrow and how we have to watch the news to find out more. Well on one of the 6 o'clock news casts they announce accidentally that Aldine ISD will be closed on Friday. The superintendent sent out an email saying to ignore the newscast and that school will occur as scheduled. Fast forward to 9:30 when they decide to actually cancel school... for the students. Teachers still have to show up to "secure materials" woohoo...
Friday morning rolls around and everyone kind of had the same idea to completely abandon the spirit dress reserved for Fridays. I personally decided to rebel (LOL) by wearing flip flops which is considered a big no-no . But hey it was special circumstances and thankfully no one was going to enforce the dress code. We had to unplug all electronics and get everything up off the floor in case of flooding, which took all of 30 minutes for the whole school to do. We were supposed to be there until noon, but our administrators graciously let us go at 9:30. Quick shout out to my classroom neighbor who undoubtedly had the worst first week, because as she was getting ready for a hurricane, she also had to wait to see if her son's wedding was going to be canceled/rescheduled because they decided on a beach wedding in the path of the storm :(
Currently I'm just chilling in my pjs on a Saturday night waiting to hear if I have to get up for school on Monday or not. Either way I think I'm gonna be just fine.
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