I'm alive!

Well, my first week of teaching is complete!

Let me just tell ya, student teaching in Ashland schools did not prepare me for being up here in Alaska. I didn't know that kids actually punched each other, let alone on the 3rd day of school, as hard as they can, for almost no reason!

I'm completely exhausted, I don't have many new pictures to show you, and I'm not going to write much, but I'll give you a quick rundown:

First day of school went pretty great, the kids were on their best behavior and I was running on adrenaline all day. By the end of the day I was so exhausted that I fell asleep at 7:30. The kid I was most worried about behaviorally turned out to be a very sweet kid that had a major transformation over the summer. Another kid I was worried about is the same kid I was expecting, he hasn't written his name on a single paper and I don't even think he's picked up his pencil yet. There's only one way to go on that one, and that's up! We all (except one student) did a cool art project where we answered questions based on the color that we used on each letter of our name. It's proudly displayed in the hall.

Sorry, It's all backward again... 

Second day also went pretty good, it was an early release day so we got out an hour early and I got to send them home before they got really tired. We did a super cute art project... 

The colored pencil project focuses on the students eyes.
On notebook paper they wrote 3 goals they have for the year,
and it looks like they are holding that paper out in front of them...
at least I hope! 

The third day of school, Thursday, not such a great day. Kids were super squirrely, they were breaking rules left and right, and we ended the day with a swift punch to the kid that doesn't even talk. I lost my voice, I wrote a referral, I made them sit with their heads down on their desk for 15 minutes, and I had kids that were being majorly sneaky. No bueno. 

Today, Friday, was a lot better. It was about as good as a day can go when the teacher doesn't have a voice, it's Friday, and there's a fire drill. I'm still alive at least! 

Our language arts curriculum has been giving me some trouble. There is too much to teach in a day, I am required to spend 120 minutes every day on it, and it is wayyyy over the kids heads. They are so bored, and I am too. I'm required to teach it with "fidelity" and I can't seem to teach it because they are so bored that they are acting out and upset because they don't understand. I'm a little disheartened by that, but I'm going to put in a lot of work this weekend to try and figure out what I can do to make it more accessible for them. 

For those of you that know me, you probably wonder how math is going for us. It's going great, I can relate with the 90% of my kids that hate math, and we're working through that. The curriculum is great, the kids are busy busy busy, and I wish I had more time to teach it because we're not getting it all done everyday. But in that realm, all is well. Who knew I would actually look forward to math everyday! 

Monday is Labor Day, so I'll be sleeping in and trying to recover my voice. On Tuesday my new teacher mentor is coming to town and he's staying with Max and I. He's offered to cook us pizza, and I'm looking forward to meeting him. He used to be a Social Studies teacher, which is wonderful because I got the short end of the stick here and I'm the only teacher without a Social Studies curriculum to use this year and the only resources I've got are the ones that the teachers here have given me. Hopefully him and I can work out a plan so that by next week I'll have some sort of a plan, and something to teach... Because I tell ya what, there's no way I can teach Alaska state history with the knowledge off the top of my head. No way. 

Thats all for now, I'm so happy it's the weekend, and I look forward to getting prepared for next week!