FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL

Wow. I… um… That is... just WOW.
This was the first week of school. I can’t really come up with the right words to explain this week, so I’m limited simply to… WOW.

(This reminds me of a funny part in White Christmas when Bob Wallace asks one of his staff how much his big ideas are going to cost and then reacts to the total with “Wow.” When Phil Davis asks, “How much is ‘wow’?” Bob explains by saying, “Somewhere between ‘ouch’ and ‘boinnnngggg.’ And all Phil can say in response is ‘WOW.’ ”)

Anyhoo… first week of school, right. This year I’m back in seventh grade, and oh my, are they ever young. Many of them haven’t had their middle school growth spurts yet, so they’re shorter than the practically-high-schoolers that I had become accustomed to last year. They’re small and nervous, which has its advantages. They’re so concerned with getting their lockers open that they don’t have time yet for goofing off. And they haven’t yet been flooded with the eighth grade hormones that cause 13- and 14-year-olds to turn into living, breathing blobs of gelatinous, romantic infatuation. (Hall duty takes on a whole new, nauseating perspective when you’re surrounded by teenage inappropriateness, let me tell you.) Yeah, I do not miss that. The down side to a whole new crop of seventh graders is that I have to go through all the work of training them. I was kind of spoiled last year: eighth graders have been through all that; they already know the rules and are used to following them.

My new students seem to be fairly nice kids, but there are just SO MANY of them. My classes are currently at 37, 39, and 33. The class of 33 isn’t bad; last year all three of my classes were 33 to 35. But 37 and 39? I have exactly 39 desks now, and – just my luck – not a single student in that class has been absent. I had to bug our really patient custodians for extra desks on Tuesday so that I would have enough seats for my kids on Wednesday. I have no idea where the desks came from – some mysterious other room in the building, I guess. I’m lucky to have gotten them when I did; there’s now a shortage of desks, tables, and chairs throughout the building. (I heard that one teacher plundered the conference room just to have enough chairs for his students.) It’s CRAZY. There are moments when I pause in the middle of whatever I’ve been saying to them, and I happen to look around the room and see them all sitting there, staring at me, and it will hit me again –– there’s SO MANY of them. We went to the library today, and there were so many students in my class that when I walked out the door after them, the first students in line had already reached the doors of the library.

One day this week, a sweet girl who got confused about her schedule accidentally showed up in my 3rd period class (instead of my 5th period, which she’s assigned to). There were 40 students in my room – and only 39 chairs. It’s a good thing I recognized her so quickly and figured out that she was in the wrong class… because I could definitely feel a panic attack coming on. One of my boys was standing in the back, and he looked around at all of the occupied chairs, and then turned to me with a confused, slightly forlorn look in his eyes, and my heart started racing, and my hands started shaking, and I swear he eyed my desk chair, MY chair, just for a second, and then I spotted the girl-out-of-place… fortunately.

I think things have gone well so far, and the kids have responded well to anything I’ve asked of them. But when I try to figure out how to describe my week, all I can think about is how many of them there were… (Also, how on earth will I ever learn all of their names??!!!) So I’m going to give up and just say that my week was… wow. I’m going to take a nap.

Isn't That the Boy Scouts?

A teacher should always be prepared. Preparation is a funny thing, when you think about it. This week was our prep week for teachers -- oddly filled with more meetings than prep. Oh, so many meetings... But I digress.

I read an article this week called "What Makes a Great Teacher" in which the author was saying a well-prepared teacher with a clear objective and a thoughtful plan for how to accomplish that objective is more effective in the classroom than one who has a dynamic personality or entertaining delivery. At the same time, effective teachers can't be tied to their plans if the students are "getting it." They have to be ready to alter the lesson to meet the needs of students at lots of different levels. This is stressful -- have a plan, but be willing to scrap it, so have another plan ready for that... A compulsive planner could easily go overboard with the back-up plans. I think the best approach is to be well-prepared (yes, with a comprehensive and thoughtful plan), but to accept that you can't think of everything. At any rate, this theory appeals to me because I am well planned. I tell my students this, actually. I tell them, "I ALWAYS HAVE A PLAN." And they know that it's true.

Then there are the students... A very kind 6th grade teacher-friend of mine is going to have a student in her class this year who has been labeled "The Puker" by the specialists at our school. Apparently, whenever he's feeling too anxious, he vomits. Also, when he's upset, he vomits. Oh, and when he's frustrated and wants to get out of class, he vomits. On demand. Fortunately, she knows about it ahead of time and can formulate a plan. Two years ago, one of my nicest boys got sick and threw up in front of the entire class in the middle of the state writing test. I admit, I did not have a plan ready for that.

So we're all supposed to be getting ready for school to start, which, I assume, means lesson plans and copies and seating charts and whatnot, but which, in reality, involves more poster-hanging and file-purging and cabinet-gutting. It's like every teacher needs to start the year with a clean classroom. (Or maybe it's just me. I'm a freak. I couldn't even THINK about lesson plans until I had the boxes unpacked and the chairs pushed in neatly at all the desks.) And whatever planning and preparation you manage to get done will probably be interrupted by all of the people you haven't seen in two months -- welcome interruptions, but interruptions just the same.

Occasionally, you end up down in the office to get something or give something or... something. It's nice to get out of the classroom once in a while, of course, but an educational application of Murphy's Law seems to be that you will only be able to remember to get one thing from the office at a time. And each time, you'll get back to your classroom and realize you needed something else.

Then there's the agony of hanging posters without a laser level. (Is that a thing? I need a laser level!) And it's not just posters. My teaching partner lined up his desks using string -- just to make sure they were all perfectly aligned. And don't even get me started on writing things on the chalkboard or whiteboard -- it would be easier to convince my bunch of pre-teens that a line of writing SHOULD angle down like that.

Yikes, this post is scattered. (HA! That was my plan all along! It's an example for you of how my workday went today.)