The School Year Has Begun

     The past three weeks have been very stressful.  I worked for 2-1/2 weeks to move into a new building and organize my classroom.  The last few days I was working until 8:00 p.m.  The day before school began I was there until 10:00 p.m.  I was very frustrated!  It is so hard to change grades.  I have so much in teaching materials for third and fourth grades that I feel I should save in case I teach those grades again.  I still have boxes to go through, but they are leaning against walls and kind of out of the way for now.  I'll post pictures when it all looks nice.
   
     I made it through the first week of teaching first graders.  Luckily, there were only three teaching days.  This is harder than I even imagined!  There are 30 students in the classroom.  They want to talk all of the time.  I'm not used to kids who talk while I talk to the class.  I see they need a lot of work on their behaviors.  This will sure take a lot of time.  They are cute kids and very sweet.  It is so hard, too, when they don't know how to read much.  They seem to be afraid to write.  They tell me that they can't write, but the kindergarten teacher said they did a lot of writing last year.  We'll have to work on building that confidence in writing.


     I'm so glad that it is the weekend.  I really needed a break.  Next week will be even harder since I'll have to teach five days.  I'll make it!  I read the blogs of all of these first grade teachers who love first grade.  I hope I will be there someday.  Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to teach them and get them to follow the rules.  


     It's Saturday, but I've been working on typing things on my computer that I need for school.  I just wasn't able to get all of it ready before school began.  I'm hoping I can have things ready this week.  My H.O.R.S.E. Book is almost ready.  Tonight I worked on my lesson plan form and trying to figure out my schedule.  That is hard work!  It's hard to figure out a schedule for a grade I'm not sure how to teach.


     Tomorrow I'll work a little at school.  I need to get papers ready for this week and go through some boxes to organize a little.  I will feel better when things look better.


Diane