First Days

The first few days have been up and down. It’s kind of thrilling to have my own classroom and finally actually be a real teacher, but of course it’s also daunting. I also don’t know a lot of things about how the school functions that I probably should have been informed of. For instance, one of the five classes I have during the day is far and away the worst behaviorally. The first two days I though to myself, “Wow, it’s really strange how random class assignments can create such different classroom dynamics.” Maybe I should have figured that it couldn’t have been random, but whatever. Anyway, I just happened to hear another teacher say in passing that they assign all the behavior problems to the fifth section of every grade, and lo and behold, 7-5 is the section in question. If I hadn’t heard this at random I literally could have gone a whole year not knowing why one of my sections is so much more difficult than the others. That’s one example of several where my life would be made easier just by knowing things that I don’t even know I need to know.
I finally got the principal to explain the way they assigned sections and what he said was that they put all the “turds” in the same section. Because turds, of course, make everyone stink. That is literally what he said. I should admit now that I do actually like my principal.
The kids are pretty fun though. I had a bad day on Tuesday, mainly because I planned to fail, as they say. I failed to plan, because I couldn’t plan since the schedule is so unpredictable right now. I felt much better on Wednesday though. The kids had something to do and I didn’t have to stay on my feet all day.