First Week of School

This week we had our open house and our first three days of school. It all went well. I am getting to know my students and already figuring out which ones are going to be the talkers. We didn't really get into much of the material this week but that will start on Monday. I spent most of the time talking about my expectations and procedures while introducing them to their daily journals and the basic overview of the classes.

My schedule this year is a little strange, though that will change next year. It all has to do with the size of the junior class. There are only three juniors, so instead of giving them a separate section, like they have for all the other grades, they combined them with a different class for English and history. Last year they were combined with the class ahead of them, but this year they are combined with the class below. So as sophomores, they took the junior level history and English classes. This year as juniors they are taking the sophomore level history and English classes. This means that instead of teaching for 5 periods of the day (out of 7), I am only teaching 4 periods of the day. That is good because it means I get more prep time, which I think I will definitely need this year. Because we go to school in teacher vans, we have to leave each day at 4. If you're not done with what you need to do, you can either stay and work and then take public transportation back, or you can bring your work home with you. Having the extra prep period will hopefully mean that I get more work done at school and therefore have less to bring home with me. The only bad part of having the extra prep is when I have it. My planning periods were originally 3rd and 4th hours. The extra prep I gained is 2nd hour. So I teach 1st hour, have 3 planning periods in a row, then study hall and lunch, followed by teaching 5th, 6th, and 7th periods in the afternoon. And the way the schedule is set up, I only supervise study hall twice a week. So some days, I don't have any students from 9 a.m. until 12:30 after lunch. Great time to get a lot of work done, and I'm sure that some days will be very productive. However, that gets to be a long morning, and it would be really nice to have prep time in the afternoon. Oh well.

My schedule (in case anyone is wondering) is as follows:
1st hour: American Literature (12th)
2nd hour: Prep
3rd hour: Prep
4th hour: Prep
Study Hall
Lunch
5th hour: World Literature (10th/11th)
6th hour: Speech/Drama
7th hour: 9th Grade Literature and Composition (9th)

I'm excited that speech and drama is my elective this year. I am really looking forward to it. We've already been having fun in speech class. I enjoyed hearing their introductory speeches and where they had all lived and what languages they spoke. Even the students are enjoying themselves. In fact, one of my students said yesterday, "This class is more fun than I thought it would be." Maybe that's what I get for playing charades and pictionary to demonstrate nonverbal communication.

Here are pictures of my classroom and of the view from the windows.

As you can see, there are a lot of windows in my classroom, especially because it is at the end of the hall, so my windows wrap around the corner. The school is situated on the outskirts of the city, so most classrooms have a view of the surrounding rice patties. Right now it's nice and green, but that will change once they start to harvest the rice. I am looking forward to seeing the harvesting process and how that all works.

Thank you for your continued prayers. I know they helped this first week go smoothly. I was reminded this week how much I really do love teaching. The past couple weeks I've been doing a lot of planning, and it felt good to stand up in front of a group of students and teach them. I'm excited for the rest of the school year, but I'll still need your prayers as I know I have a lot to learn yet about teaching and about my students.