Late August

 Can you smell the laminator film melting together? Most of my former co-workers go back to school this week, on Monday or Tuesday. But this year I am headed into the before school teacher meetings, with the "meet and greet" where students drop off their school supplies on September 7, and our first day of school on September 8. So unlike most teachers nationwide, I'm still knee deep in back to school prep. And while I know that encasing paper in plastic is not great for the environment, I can't imagine this time of year without a heavy dose of laminating.

This weekend I created name labels on hands, suns, and squares with chevron stripes for the cupboards I'm using in lieu of backpack hooks, cubbies, and a magnetic restroom checkout system. I put together and printed a document with the daily schedule to hand students on the first day and a bigger picture of my Bitmoji mining a heart shaped gem for my hallway display tied to our theme of "Building a World of Joy." I typed affirmations into little squares to use in taking attendance (students will read the affirmation I leave on their desk instead of saying "here" during attendance.) All of those items ran through my home laminator this weekend. The list would more than double if I included everything I've laminated since the beginning of August.

I also created the annual welcome back postcard and a document to hand out at the meet and greet for students to do a scavenger hunt around my classroom. The latter is something I've never done, but my new partner teacher has seen at her own children's schools in previous years. I'm excited to see this new activity in action.

My partner teacher and I sat on a Zoom call for hours on Saturday finalizing our class schedule and creating our back to school presentation for the evening of the meet and greet. This was after my husband and I went to my classroom so he could set up my displays (external monitor and SMART board) and add a printer I was gifted on Friday to my school computer. He took the opportunity to also manage my cables. While he worked I affixed student names to cubbies and cupboards and set out some of my classroom decorations.

For the first time ever, I had made the decision to not purchase a paper lesson plan book. I stopped using one mid-way through last school year because my partner teacher and I planned via Zoom using a template I created on Google Slides. Writing everything into a paper planner was an unnecessary step that I decided wasn't worth my time. On Saturday during a conversation with my new partner teacher, she seemed excited about using a paper planner to plan together in person. Sunday morning I browsed Amazon to discover that lesson plan books are deeply discounted during the final week of August and prepped to ship. My new plan book arrived before the end of the day.

Sunday night I met up with a former middle school teammate of mine who just accepted a fourth grade position at the school where we used to work together. She was looking for advice about transitioning down to the new age group. Her students come back to school this week. We talked about the core subjects and what reading and writing skills to try to develop by the end of the school year. I promised to share some resources with her and we agreed to talk to our partner teachers about having our fourth graders become pen pals this school year. The visit left me filled with joy and ready to take on the school year.