This was the first time that I started off the year with "my own" class. Last year, I took contracts mid-year so I didn't need to establish new routines for the most part. I would highly suggest the book "The First Days of School" as a resource for establishing classroom expectations etc. I wish that I had been able to take a look at it BEFORE school started though... oh well. My first days before the kids arrived did not go exactly as planned, as the night before my first day, a window was smashed in my classroom and computers were stolen, so I was down a day for set-up time, as my classroom was a crime scene and I needed to wait for the police to check things over before I was allowed in... oh my goodness what a nightmare!
Anyhow, I set up the classroom as best I could considering my time constraints and the fact that I had not had any say in the order process for classroom materials as I wasn't there the previous year. Fortunately, the teacher that I was replacing had a great deal of resources in terms of posters, art supplies, and books. I did a bit of scrounging in the basement to find some more storage for in the classroom, so I was lucky to not have to spend any money.
The first day of school I was very nervous, but the kids were great and I enjoyed the "honeymoon phase" where the kids are really quiet and super respectful. There were so good that I decided I didn't even need a behaviour program! A few weeks in, the kids were more at ease and started to see more problems, so I implemented a behaviour program that involved communicating with the parents. As the weeks went on, I started to feel behind in everything and more stressed than I had the year before, but a large part of this was due to the fact that this year I was more aware of what I needed to do! Looking back, I really didn't know what I was doing for the first bit, nor did I have a great deal of support or feedback in the first job I took.
The class (and the school) was great-- I really had a wonderful bunch of kids! So here comes the point of this post- to share some of the stories from the past couple of months. All names will be changed, of course.
Jessica was a cute girl with a sense of humour who loved to chat and asked me on a nearly daily basis, "Mme... est-ce que tu peux m'acheter de la crème glacé?"
And then there was Greg, who explained to me, in French, how the Northern Lights work. I wish him all the best in the future in the scientific field of his choice- what a smart kid!
Andy was another one of the smart ones, but my, did he love to chat. He shared his sketchbook with the class-- what a lot of talent he has. I wonder if his dedication to drawing and writing stories has anything to due with the fact that he's not allowed online at home during the week?
Carin was a talented writer... she constantly asked me for vocabulary in French that I had to look up in the dictionary!
Brock liked to bounce around... a bright kid but sometimes had a hard time focusing. My favourite thing about him was how he couldn't keep in his excitement when he found something interesting, like when he said "RAZ kids (online reading tool) is the BOMB!" or when he made a tower for the construction unit in science, and instead of just taking the tower apart, he "imploded" it with "dynamite", like in the movie we had just watched in class.
Thank goodness for Jill, who is much better at remembering things than I am... she'll go far in life!
Another one of my favourite things was the time we used plastic tokens for Bingo that were held in old film containers. I had a feeling they didn't know what they were, so I asked if anyone knew what the containers were from. No one knew, so I explained that cameras used to use film, and one student said, "I'd like to see how that works." My favourite thing about teaching kids is how everything is new to them. :)
There are many more stories I could add, but I'll stop here for now, as I think it might be long enough. :D
