Highlights from my first full day of teaching:
- A seventh grader saying, "See, I'm getting smarter" after completing the pattern AA, BB, CC, DD and 1, 3, 5, 7.
- My hard-as-nails, pretend-Goth eighth grade student asking me what my favorite color was. I had strategically dressed all in black today. I just looked at her all cool and replied, "Do I really have to tell you what my favorite color is?" She just sat back and smiled, saying, "Yeah, black is my favorite color too."
- All four of my Reading students turned in Read Around the World book reviews. They each filled out the title of the book we read as a class, the author, a brief summary of the book and a quick review of whether they liked it. Half liked it, half didn't. And that's just fine with me. We're 40 miles around the world already.
Thank you so much to everyone who has sent books! They have seriously been a huge help and the prospect of more books coming in is keeping my students on their toes. Can you believe that my teenagers are actually INTRIGUED by my challenge for them to read 2,940 books this year?? Today, we read Phil Nash's contribution entitled, "Say Anything." Julius didn't like it, because he thought the story about the girl being teased was too sad. Natalia liked it, because it was so short. On the other hand, Derrick didn't like it because it wasn't long enough.
- I almost got a free lunch in the cafeteria when I hung out in line with my kids. The cafeteria workers thought I was a student. I was so mortified, I quickly corrected them. It was only afterward that I kicked myself for not taking the free lunch. It was pizza day too.
- Two students invited me to go to lunch with them and to take a walk around campus after school. They also begged me to visit them in the dormitories in the evenings to do extra reading and to let them stay after school to do their homework. Keep in mind I teach Special Ed. It's a job just to get students to become motivated enough to do their work after so many seemingly failed attempts. Just hearing them say those things gives me an extra jolt of energy to forget about my headache and to stay up a little later to make their lessons.
Lowlights to my first day of teaching:
- Teaching seven periods straight, with only a half hour break for lunch. I have no planning periods. I talk for more than seven hours a day at work. No stops. I thrive on Airborne and Advil. The headache and sore throat have not gone away. I am so tired. And it is Monday. AND I have been told by 40-year teaching veterans that the sore-throat thing doesn't go away with practice.
- Having one of my students look at the burn on my arm from my oven rack and ask me, excitedly, if I cut myself too.
- Calling my pretend-Goth student's house over the weekend to introduce myself to her grandmother and having the phone hung up on me by the teen. Calling her back. Having the phone hung up again. Years of calling strangers for reporting assignments did not ease the burn. In fact, I had never been so offended.
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