This is it, time to start!

It was been so time consuming, getting ready for day one of school. It’s not that I need to be prepared because I am. With 21 years behind me I have my lessons together, they are all mapped out, worksheets typed, power-points done, and what I’m going to say has been rehearsed and told for years. It is the idea that I will be in front of new students, be in a new classroom, be moved around from room to room over the course of the week.

I have to rearrange what I do because I will be in different room on different days. Monday I will teach in the art room with no Promethean board, Tuesday I will be in the history room with everything at my finger tips, the same thing on Wednesday and Thursday; Friday I will be out in the temp building with no Promethean board, no nothing. Each one requires you to do something other than what I have done for years.

I have activities that do not require a board and visuals to work on so moving to different locals isn’t a problem for the students; it’s just a logistical problem for me. I have to rearrange what I do. The kids will never know that I had to change things.

I hope to walk in and just do what I always do and WOW them beyond belief. However, because I stick to my guns’ on things like ‘being on time, having homework, using a black ink pen, and such; I have been told by a couple of teachers that I may not make it here. I ask them if they wanted to start a betting pool to guess at how soon I quit. They back away. These students may not have been held to those standards but that will change – for them.
A few other faculty members said that I will be a breath of fresh air in these kids lives, that will will step up and do what is asked, that I will love them and they will love me. I have so many hands on type projects, very few work sheets, very little “homework”, plenty of tech type assignments, things they are not getting under their normal past teachers.

Several teachers are complaining about the lesson plans they have to write and I’m saying “I have written them in the past” and I have them all done. All I will have to to is rearrange them to meet the needs of my next classroom order. It looks like I will have very little homework to do to be ready for this class other than to rearrange my assignments.

The problem I will have in my “Art in Literature” classes will not be what to do or how t grade. The ELA teacher will tell me what she wants done; I just have to see to it that it gets done. I will only see these kids twice a week and work on what they need to do. She will grade them. We will be creating totem poles for one class, set one will be how the students see themselves currently and the next – finished totem will be how they see themselves in the future. The sixth grade will be working on a Greek mythology project. I don’t have to create the idea because she already has in her mind what she wants to students to do, I just need to instruct them as to how to do them. I can just be an Art teacher and work a lot of one-on-one.

Monday will be a meet and greet time with the kids going to each of their classes for about 20 minutes after an elongated homeroom where all the paperwork will be done. I really just need to hang out because as a part-timer I don’t even have a homeroom. That could change in time to come.

The art teacher has talked to me about coming across the hall anytime I don’t have a class and working with her and her students. She only sees them once or twice a week – strange I know, but that’s another topic. She could use the help so that she – and I – can spend more one-on-one with her students. She has to teach kids from 1st grade to 8th grade and with the lower kids they want her attention all the time and she can’t ever get all things done. I told her I would love being in there. Art is my second/first love. I have an art degree and it was the first one I went after still I got sidetracked in later college years to history.

We will see what life tosses at me after I meet the students tomorrow!