I'm a "real" teacher now

Well, I've successfully completed my first week of teaching as a "brand-new" teacher. Well, I should say, survived! I put "brand-new" in quotes because I have had teaching experience prior to my first year but I was not a contracted teacher so they don't count it. Oh well, at least it gave me some ideas and I learned to help me in my first year.

I'm teaching 8th grade Civics and Economics, which is my area of expertise (the Civics part). I love the material that I get to teach but wish I had more time to get more in depth on some topics. My county puts out a really nice curriculum guide for us to use and follow (not necessarily verbatim), which I like but, there is so much material that at times, it is hard to imagine getting deep into a subject. Oh well, we'll just touch the surface of government this year and they can go into it further in 12th grade...I'll cross my fingers that at least they'll remember we have 3 branches of government :)

Let's see, what should I write? There is so much but I don't want to be boring. My older sister taught U.S. History I (Colonies to Civil War) at the same middle school I'm at now. She got married and moved with her husband to Kosovo to teach history for two years. Her blog about her experiences are fun to read, check it out at here. Before she left she laughed and told me that I would be going to the school early in the morning and staying until 6pm every night my first year. I laughed back and said, yeah right! I had been a long-term sub before in math for 8 months and had all the same duties as a regular teacher and I wasn't staying late or coming in early then so I didn't think this time would be that different. Well...

I started work on August 13th and went to a million workshops on "how to teach," which I find hilarious since most of us there had just graduated from programs where we learned all about that for 2 or 3 years. However, I did get a fwe pointers I liked. I started a week sooner than the returning teachers and when they came back it was even more workshops. I am meetinged (is that a word?) out. The fun part started on August 13th when there was an electrical fire at my home school and it literally melted the main electrical box. That resulted in 2 and 1/2 weeks of no power in our building. The county brought generators in to get us some emergency lighting and our administration bought us flashlights so I got my classroom ready in the dark. We didn't get power until the Thursday before school started. The admins were nice enough to open the school up to us on labor day weekend so from Thursday-Sunday, I lived at the school. I was there until 6 or 7pm each night! I'm very happy with my classroom and am happy to finally have my own room. I'll take some pictures once it's all finalized. It's done but I have some extra books leftover and I want that to be out of the way before I take photos. I'm lucky my sister moved because she left me a ton of posters to put up. I didn't hang up everything because I decided I don't like a cluttered room but at least I have a lot to change around in the future. I'll post about my first week in another post.