One Week Down...a lot more to go!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I just finished my first week as a first-year teacher. The picture to the right might show how I feel, I'll let you read what my eyes say. Or, at times, I feel like the one to the left...My emotions are a combination of scared, worried, stressed, excited, unsure, nervous, happy, etc. I am also constantly thinking about school, which I guess is good but it keeps me awake at nights. And, on the occasion that I might wake up in the night to go to the bathroom (dang it), I can't fall back asleep so I just pull out my laptop and work. That happened once last week, I got up at 3:00am, tried to sleep and around 3:30am I gave up and figured if I'm up I might as well get some work done and start putting my thoughts on paper.

Wow, the first week was exhausting! Luckily for me, I wasn't the only one who felt completely drained. Apparently, it's pretty normal for the first week of school to be like that and by Friday we were all dying for the week to be over. I'm just glad it was a 4 day week because I would not have made it one more day. The funny thing is the first week is pretty much house-keeping stuff and getting ready for the year but it wore me out. So far, my sister's prediction was accurate in the fact that I would be at the school a lot. However, I have chose the route to go in early instead of staying late. That's pretty funny too because I hate mornings but since I'm not sleeping well I figure I should just get up and go in early. I get more done. Plus, once I start my after school activities I won't want to stay there until 6pm.

I'm teaching 8th grade and as we all know, that age is full of drama. Already on the 3rd day of school I had a girl "cat" fight in my room. It was not phsyical but it happened in the morning when kids were coming in for homeroom. I don't need to get into details but things were resolved peacefully and nothing got out of hand. I think the girls had some unresolved summer issues. Drama, OMG! I won't really get into more detail about it but what a great way to start the year :) Haha! Actually, so far, so good. I really like my classes and I think it's going to be a great year. My classes are pretty small, with an average of 14 students each, except for one with 18 (or 20, not sure yet with schedule changes). That class is small compared to a lot of school districts but it feels huge to me. I think it will be my challenge class, not because the kids are bad but just the time of day. Also, in that class, the kids don't seem to care that much and my other classes have a lot of students excited about politics...at least for now since our first unit is elections. We'll see how it goes, I think it's going to be a great year.

Tomorrow we kick off our first unit of elections and we will discuss voting procedures and statistics and all that fun stuff. I have a few tricks up my sleeve to make it interesting and fun.