A new year

Last school year ended on June 10, 2008. This was the last official day with students. However, teachers had to come for an extra four days to clean up, pack up and get things ready for the next year. So this was the beginning of my "summer break". Since teachers have three months off of not doing anything, I couldn't wait for my relaxing vacation......

YEAH RIGHT!!! This is how my summer "vacation" was really spent":

The very first week of "break", I attended three mini workshops on Team Building activities in the classroom, "What Good Teachers Do Differently" by an awesome educational speaker, Dr. Todd Whittaker, and another workshop on Rigor and Relevence in the classroom. I was doing all this while holding down my other two summer jobs.

Week Two was spent taking another course. An education symposium on Urban Education. I wanted to be able to use this information from this workshop to help the students in my school. This was one of the best workshops that I had taken for a long time.

Fast forward to July, where I took a three day course on Mentoring Beginning Teachers. One of the most important thing that a "veteran" teacher can do, to ensure that the new teachers who are coming in, will stay. The turn over in our school is ridiculous. It's a hard school ,with a low-socio-economic population. I wanted to help, to give back to all the "mentors" in my career who helped me.

This brings me to August, when I could finally get into my class toset up for working on this year. Remember I am still working two other jobs, so the time that I had to actually work IN my classroom was very limited. Meanwhile, all summer I was sending emails setting up programs to help my school become better. What can we do to get parents involved? How can we bring up our scores? What can I do to become a better teacher and infect others with this challenge? These were my ultimate goals.

Foward to the "first week of school" for teachers. Monday was a "meet and greet". Getting to know the new teachers (21 or so) and learning of all the new "rules" that we would have to comply with. Did you ever notice that sometimes it feels that teachers have more rules that the students do? Hello? Are we all adults here? Evidently not, because this year it felt like we were getting bombarded with more things we HAVE to do, and ALOT of this we COULDN'T do anymore because other teachers didn't do their job last year.

This brings me to two full days to get my classroom ready before parents and students showed up for "Back to School Night". Overwhelmed does not even cover how we all felt. And I am a fourth year teacher, the stress on the new teachers were even more. But we made it through. Yes, some of my posters weren't (and still aren't) put up. Files that I wanted "go through" and "get in order" were never accomplished. But I made it through with no big upsets. Until I realized that I had only three days before students came and it was the " First Day of School".
A new year. 180 days to change the lives of 17 students......