First Day Fun.

Interesting first day.

To be honest, I don't remember much of it at all. It wasn't a very fun day, we just did a lot of rules, procedures, and things like that. We did do some math, but most of it was setting up the paper.

The kids were well-behaved, and it's definitely different having 24 instead of 12 like summer school. Also, since we don't really start giving diagnostics to figure out where our students are until tomorrow, we're still up in the air about how far we have to go this year. After getting some of the math work back today, though, I can tell we are already seeing some gaps.

We have two ESOL students. One is from the Dominican Republic, and the other is from the Philippines. The kids were given some time today to walk around the room and look at things, and Francis (not his real name) from the Dominican Republic, didn't move. I took him to the map area, and asked him if he knew where he was from. He pointed out his country and gave me a big smile. I showed him how far away California is and said we're both far from home. It was a nice moment.

Today wasn't difficult or anything, but I think working with my co-teacher will be a challenge. We have very different styles and different management techniques. She also has a tendency to ramble, which is frustrating because the kids aren't talking and nothing's really being done. I, on the other hand, keep thinking about how little time we had during summer school, and I want to make sure there's not a wasted second in the classroom now. Still, it's only the first day, everyone says she's a great teacher, she's helped me so much already, and I really don't know what I'm doing. So, we'll see how the year goes.

Some funny stuff that happened today:

• I'm introducing the LXS and am talking to them like they're in this secret club with these values and members all over the world. I think it's pretty cool, and some of the kids are getting into it. A student (we'll call her Iris) raises her hand and says, "Excuse me, I don't have any idea what you're talking about." Oops. Thought that was pretty funny.
• We're doing some math work and Francis raises his hand. I go over to his desk and kneel down next to him. As I kneel down I hit the corner of the tray that holds chalk and erasers at the bottom of the chalkboard, ripping a big hole in the rear of my pants. We all had a good laugh about that.
• I did a short introductory math lesson about how numbers are everywhere. It was called "A World of Numbers," and it basically had really cool pictures that they got to look at. I went through one planet; 50 states; 206 bones in the body; 2,490 years since the battle of Thermopylae (the movie 300); 48,262 seats in Oriole Park; and 637,418 people in Baltimore. The last slide was a close-up of glowing bacteria, and I said, "1,000,000 bacteria can live on the eraser of your pencil." The kids went, "Whoa..." and then the whole back table takes out their hand sanitizer all at once and starts sharing it with each other. How cute. I just created six hypochondriacs today.

Can't wait for tomorrow. Except I have to plan for it. Actually, in that case, I CAN wait for tomorrow.

I'm a real teacher now...