Today was the first full day of school. I am once again an eighth-grade homeroom teacher, teaching social studies to seventh and eighth grade students. It's been an exhausting couple of weeks, but tonight I am bone-weary tired. And tomorrow I am going with my partner teacher, principal, and the retired teacher whose classroom I took over on an overnight retreat with the eighth graders. I might need to sleep all weekend after I get home.
Yesterday was the Meet and Greet day, where parents and students come into the building to drop off supplies and see their new homeroom. I left my house, expecting to have time before families started to arrive to hang up a set of President cards I created over Labor Day Weekend. (The set I found in the classroom ended at Ronald Reagan and I decided I wanted to be able to update my set without buying a whole new one after elections.) However, the traffic gods did not approve of my plan. Normally when my commute is "bad" it takes me 45 minutes to get to school. "Terrible" traffic has taken me an hour in the past, but on the rare occasions when that happens, it's on my way home.
Yesterday it took me an hour and a half to get to school. I rolled in minutes before eighth grade students were slated to arrive to help families find their students' new classrooms. I ran into the second-grade teachers in the hallway and asked them to help me carry my new plants into my room so they wouldn't die in my car before I had the chance to get back out to it after the Meet and Greet.
The Meet and Greet itself was very fun. I spent most of the time hanging out in the hallway bantering with colleagues. I kept track of who turned in forms for our second and third day of school overnight field trip and chatted with my new students and their parents (and/or grandparents). Several students from my two fourth grade classes, now in fifth and sixth grades stopped by to say, "hi." At least one jumped up and down as she did so. Many parents were excited that I was teaching their child this year (I have taught an older sibling of at least a quarter of the eighth graders) or that their child will have the opportunity to be in my classroom again in the future. Only a couple of my former students totally ignored me as they walked past my new classroom. 😂
After families had departed and several of my co-workers left, at least to grab lunch, I sat in my principal's office for over an hour with my partner teacher planning the two day retreat. It was fun and necessary. But as I scarfed down my lunch after 1:00pm I decided to tackle tasks necessary for the first day of school rather than hang my President set as I waited for my 3:00pm meeting with the Learning Resource Director.
My 3:00pm meeting started about 4:00pm and lasted until 5:00pm. Even though I hadn't written the first day schedule on the board or finished my slide presentation for the first day, I left when the meeting concluded. Thankfully, the evening traffic was lighter than expected, especially for leaving at peak commute time.
This morning traffic was light and I arrived with time to collect my thoughts before the day started. The day was fun. Middle schoolers are interesting people. Even when I realized I was scheduled to have two classes in my room at the same time (my own homeroom for Spanish and a seventh grade homeroom for study hall), I was able to find a place for everyone to be. I taught one of my first day of school lessons based on Ted Kooser's poem "Abandoned Farmhouse" to every seventh grader and gave them the class period to tell me something about their likes and dislikes using the structure of the poem.
I tracked down all the necessary paperwork to take my students away overnight, and put everything in order before I left for the day, again at 5:00pm. Maybe I'll get those Presidents hung next week...
The highlight of my day was when one student said, "I already have mad respect for you, but I don't know why."
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