First Day

Day one went fairly smoothly.  Both of my resource room classes (period 2 and period 7) had 50% attendance, which is kind of hysterical because that means I had four students in each of those classes.  Period 2 was wonderful--they are all such sweet kids, and it was almost awkward to go over my rules and consequences systems with them.  One of them wants to be an artist, two of them want to be vets, and "Big Mike" wants to be a mechanical engineer, despite the fact that he hates math and science.

Periods 1 and 5 I "push into" Ms. A's Integrated Algebra class, so today I didn't do much but introduce myself and help students with the review problems.  One student referred to us as "Batman and Robin" when we tried to describe what co-teaching would look like in that class.

After Period 2, the Bio teacher (who is also TFA) asked how my class was, and I said, "I only had four students, it isn't possible to have behavior issues with only four students."  I'm a big believer in jinxing....and I definitely jinxed myself there.  Let me just say that the days I write in this blog to vent, it will more than likely be about period 7.  They were really disrespectful--not to me, but to each other, which was pretty disappointing.  Had to start implementing the consequence system right away, but I inadvertently gained some "street cred" when I mentioned that I live near Pratt Institute (immediately they all burst out in excitement "Oooh Ms. C lives in the hood?!").

One thing I learned today: an hour goes by waaay slower than 45 minutes.  At summer school, I felt like I was never able to get through a full lesson.  Today my whole lesson was done with 15 minutes to spare, even though I was positive I had over-planned.

Tomorrow is Big Goals day...