The Week Before Students Arrive

Ahh...Back to work. I love it! I am not someone who particularly likes a lot of down time. I like to be busy and can become depressed if I don't feel like I'm doing something useful. There's not a lot of "useful" stuff to do when you live in a 400 square foot space. Cleaning the apartment takes me about 5 minutes and doing laundry is almost a non-event. I was a stay-at-home mom when my kids were little. I kind of wanted to be a working mom and hated when I would meet someone and the first question they would ask was, "What do you do?" When I said I stayed home with my kids, they practically turned and walked away, assuming I had nothing intelligent to talk about. This really bothered me. Of course I gave my all to my kids, but I also spent lots of time on more visible forms of "useful" stuff, particularly cleaning. I thought I needed a visible form of my usefulness, so I kept my home meticulously clean. Our home in Texas, when Wes was 2 and Alli was a newborn, was about 4,000 square feet. Cleaning took lots of time. The front entry had a very dark hardwood floor that showed every speck of dust. My workload grew exponentially a year later when we moved to Montana, into a 10,000 square foot log home on 500 acres. I had no idea how much upkeep was required on a log home. Every wall in the massive home looked like this (very few drywall walls), which meant that dust collected on EVERY SINGLE LOG!

For some reason, dead flies lined every windowsill as well, so they required regular vacuuming. (By the way, vacuuming dead flies creates a unique and not-so-pleasant smell.)

I feel useful! Work is about to begin! Students at The New American Academy start school next week, so this week the teachers have been setting up their classrooms. Four teachers share our massive, open classroom. There are several different shapes of student tables. No one seemed to want the trapezoid tables, so I claimed them. Most teachers arrange this type of table like so.

I arranged mine like this.

The teachers had never seem the tables arranged this way, and they kept calling other teachers in to see what I had done, each saying, "I've never seen anyone arrange them this way!" They may have been rethinking their decision to shun the trapezoid. It took me many tries to get them just the way I wanted them. I think I've achieved a sort of stadium feel, with all the table groups facing the Smartboard, so that all students can see the Smartboard from their tables, if I ever want to show something while they are seated at their desks. My style is more suited to teaching while students are gathered around me on the rug, but it will be nice to have another option. This is the first time I have not had a teacher desk. I've never actually sat at my teacher desk, but it is a good place to keep all the office supplies and a place to pile all the papers that need to be graded. Instead, I have a traditional student desk, on which sits my very nice Mac desktop computer that operates the Smartboard. Inside the desk, I've tucked all the necessities, like tape, paperclips, pens, scissors, Post-Its, stapler, etc. I love my Smartboard! I have typically had a Mimio, which also requires a projector, but the Smartboard has the projector attached to the front of it, so there aren't wires to trip over, which is the obvious advantage so far.

My kindergarten team worked at breakneck speed to get everything ready because we had an Open House scheduled for Thursday of the week before the start of school. We would rotate students to all 3 areas, which they will be doing during a typical school day. We would each start with our "homeroom" or "house" students. My group will be called the "green house." My kiddos will start the day with me, then go to one of the other 2 houses: Ms. Balsan's red house for writing and phonics and Miss Brittany's blue house for reading.  Each teacher will teach "interdisciplinary" to their own house. Interdisciplinary is science/social studies/engineering, which we plan together. I will be teaching math. I like the way we're doing this because it makes lesson planning much easier. In years past, I've spent up to 6 hours on the weekend working on lesson plans, because I've always taught every subject. I will be using a workshop model, teaching a math mini lesson to the entire group that's in front of me at the time, then sending the majority of students off to work in small groups at math centers while I work with a small group. Then I will see the next house and repeat the same procedure.

Yesterday was the Kindergarten Open House. I wasn't nervous, for the first time in my teaching career. I think it's because I had my teammates in other parts of our massive classroom doing the same thing as me at the same time, with our Master Teacher circulating to help if necessary.  I got to meet my adorable students and their sweet families. I am so excited for school to start!