School daze

Hi everyone!

This past week school began here in Columbia. Monday-Wednesday I had inservice. We did a variety of things, incuding fixing up the classroom and discussing curriculum issues. Thursday, it all began. I teach reading enrichment first period. The students were so quiet and I have a feeling it is going to be hard to get them to talk at all. Three days a week we will meet in the library to read. I wish this class was around when I was in high school!

Four periods a day I teach English Link. Each class is completely different because of the group of kids in them. On Friday I gave them their first Friday Free Write to see where they are with writing. I also asked them to write me a letter explaining what they learned last year, hope to learn, and challenges or difficulties for them. It was insightful. I have roughly 115 students combined in those classes. I am sure more will be said about this class as the year goes on. I should be prepping for it as I type...

The new thing going on this year is an intervention period. All class periods are 46 minutes long, and then there is a 30 minute period at the end of the day. I have 16 students who I will keep up with all year. Each day of the week is designated for a certain subject area's tutoring day. Ie. Monday for Language Arts. If a student is failing English, he/she will be sent to a different class on that day for tutoring, as well as all of my usual students since I would be tutoring. The students will constantly be shuffling around. The nice thing is that enrichment classes can be offered to students who have all A's and B's. They can sign up for say, open gym time, or a teacher can choose to offer a class, such as yoga. The students would sign up a week in advance, and on that day, the students of that teacher would be split up just like on tutoring days. Hopefully we will see an improvement with our students this year from it. No student has to stay after school for tutoring since it is part of the school day.

Nice weather here today. I want to take a nap, or go to the pool, but I need to work. Alas, summer has ended. I went to church this morning with my friend Emily while Matt worked on homework at the law library. We then went out to lunch at a Mexican restaurant. My food was just alright. Hopefully we will take the dogs to a park tonight. Also, my rash has mostly cleared up! For those who don't know, I had an allergic reaction to some medicine the day before school started! It was red spots literally all over my body. Glad that is on it's way out! Looking forward to the first full week of school.


Shout out to my sister this week. Miss you and congrats on passing your first exam!