Seven flipping teen

Here’s what it looks like-

Too too many. I need to just stay chill on the outside but seriously I am panicking on the inside. I already knew 10 of them-seven are new.  Including the twins (one far right middle row, the other center middle row) They give off a smart and snappy but respectful sort of vibe.  I’m not sure I’ll be able to afford stocking the pantry for the whole week. The one on the top right  wrote an I<heart>u at the bottom of her snack food preference page.  The one at the other end of the top row told me I was her favorite teacher (actually she amended second favorite after math) ever.  And it was only third period.

The way I see it the way to build relationships is to establish trust.  I shared a lot about myself, my life now, what my life was like in high school.  It was one of those pin drop quiet moments. The point was also to say that whatever they’ve got going on outside of school- they’re ok and they matter.  

I just think class wise everything is going to take a lot more time. Closer to what I thought it would be last year.

At the elementary school I am still waiting for a confirmation on which kids I see when and what I'm supposed to do with them when they get there.  I’m over the fact that I could be doing this much more quickly and efficiently because it’s nice not to have to but I’m starting to get frustrated with the always changing not knowing what it is aspect.  Especially since the schedules I made ran as printed on the first day with the only complaints being typos.  Today I pointed out one problem on what was supposed to be a final version and she looked at me and said “oh I forgot to take that off of your printed copy, it’s not on mine.”  We’ll o.k. then.

Yesterday she also said that maybe I could teach music to first grade two times a week if I focused on rhyming.  I managed not to say “name me a song or a poem (which is all that I teach with if she ever looked at my plans) that DOESN’T rhyme for Pete’s sake.

There is what I believe to be one of the kidnapped immigrant children in my third grade.  We were looking at the floor rug of the United States and walking to the vacation places and he asked me where “Old Mexico” was on the map.  Come to find he speaks Spanish (though his English seems good (but now that I think of it there were a few time when he didn’t follow directions and maybe he just didn’t understand them.) He was definitely digging the interaction- time to download the Spanish dictionary.

And in the category of “kids say the darnedest things”... Michael is on the spectrum.. when kids are playing instruments he waves his hands in the air and says “do you like my directing?”  Preferring not to play an instrument and not really noticing that he isn’t.  His teacher last year was in constant angry mean sarcastic yelling voice. Let’s call her Mrs. Miller.  Today on the first day of fourth grade music I was talking about being kind.  I noted that after spending every day together, we sometimes can get on each other’s nerves.  When that happens we tend to pull out the mean “I’m right you’re wrong” voice. And then I demonstrated it.  Without missing a beat Michael said “that sounds just like Mrs. Miller.”  I’m pretty sure he wasn’t really disrespecting his former teacher (who thankfully left the profession this year.). He was just making an observation.  A particularly awkward observation to his giggling classmates given that we had just talked about respect.  Hil. Air. Ious.

Day one is in the books.