Tuesday, August 26, 2008

School 'n' Other Stuff

So my apartment is making great progress. It's down to the little stuff that takes forever to put away. But I'm bribing myself and getting a cat when it's clean. Which I'm hoping will be this weekend. I almost got one today but decided to wait till we had the weekend to bond. I'm excited! I miss having a kitty. I was washing my dishes before dinner (quesadillas; yum) and realized that (so far) living alone is not that bad. I was not really looking forward to it. I mean, I was. But I wasn't. But I find I like having the place to myself and being able to get into the shower as soon as I wake up and all that stuff.

Today was the second day of classes and I'm going to love teaching my French classes. I teach it twice, once during 2nd hour and again during 7th. Monday was policies day in all my classes, so real teaching began today and I had them able to greet and say good-bye by the end of the hour. I even heard some of them continuing in the halls. I'm trying to make it fun. There are over 20 French students all told; 12ish in 2nd hour and 15ish in 7th. Chemistry is the largest class which has 17 (my room is packed!!) then I teach Earth Science (10 kids) and Life Science (9 kids). I teach something like 55 of the 57 JH/HS students in all 5 of my classes combined. Some students I see 2x which actually puts my total to about 67 students. But I am happy about that because then I get to see just about everyone with out really trying! And I still love them all. I can tell the new ones will fit in well. My homeroom are my kids from last year and every one was excited to see that I was their homeroom teacher again. Max and Jesse both said something to that effect. It's nice to be loved.

I had a kid in detention for speaking Korean on the very first day of school. He was speaking outside the washroom as I was coming up the stairs. I gave him a warning and continued on to my room whereupon he followed about 3 minutes later speaking Korean again. This is someone who has been in our school for about 3 years and knows better. Needless to say, I did not hear him speaking Korean today. You might think that's harsh (me giving detention on the first day) but last year teachers were unwilling to come down hard at the beginning and the Korean speaking got out of hand. I decided I don't care what the other teachers think/do. I'm going to take care of issues that happen in my room at my descretion. Hopefully at least for me they'll know I mean what I say when I say" No Korean!!"

One of the frustrations of late at school is that there is no printer readily available. I went to Mrs. J to see about moving one that was usually available but under plastic whilst the area it lives is being renovated. She said no but that she had an extra printer she could loan me for the time I'm here! So I've got a printer. It's old but it works. Now I don't have to save tests on my USB any more to be printed (then photocopied) at school. Now I have to remember to take any printed materials to school the next day.

1 comment:

Rebecca said...

SOO glad the calsses are going well! You will have to post kitty pics. Love ya! YFM