Wednesday, August 9

School starts Monday

Well, they made me head of the dept this year. I think this may be more of a curse than a blessing, but we will see. :) I have 4 brand new teachers that are going through the alternate certification program. They will all end up doing very, very well, but right now are stressed beyond belief. I was seriously not that stressed my first year out, was I? I had people near tears today. Maybe I was just more clueless about what I was getting myself into.

Got our TAKS scores back from the summer test today...I had 11 kids pass from 25 that took the test. Now, 63 didn't pass in February so that means that 38 didn't even show up to *take* the summer test. Believe me that they will hear it from me when they get back. I might give them till the second day of school...maybe. But I think that most kids that showed up every day to take their tests passed at least something. So my Lit Genre numbers just dropped from 111 kids in 3 classes to 94 kids in 3 classes. I had prayed that 15 kids passed, which didn't happen, but that was when I had 93 kids scheduled in May...Now I'm back to where I started. As long as 5th period gets below 38 kids (like that many are ever going to show up during lunch anyway) and 7th below 34 because 7th period I just can't handle the stress of 34 kids at one time. I am also praying that certain kids don't end up in 7th period again...pray with me please.

My schedule will be as follows:

1st - Lit Genre (33)
2nd - Planning
3rd - Reading I Language Center (19)
4th - Dept chair prep
5th - Literary Genre (38)
6th - Reading II Language Center (18)
7th - Literary Genre (34)

At least have those Language Center classes and plans to keep me sane amist the 30+ classes of kids who failed the test the first time. :) What am i saying though? I wouldn't give up one of those kids to another class if you begged me. They are my babies.

I have 3 boys hired to come help me file and box things on Friday. Specifically the 7000 novels for our novel curriculum and the workbooks that have to be carted all around the school. I told the oldest brother not to show up by himself. If his brothers wouldn't come, he needed to call someone else to come with him. We will see what happens.

2 comments:

Sher said...

Oh, you will be fine! You're an old teacher by now.

So, Tampa is cool. I made some friends from other JA's around the country. A few of us will be at the other training in Colorado in September. That should be fun. We went to the beach tonight and walked around, ate seafood, then watched the sun set. It was fantastic. I picked you up a seashell. It is small, but pretty!

Adventurous Twenty-Something said...

Sorry to hear your cuota of students didn't pass. Hopefully this year! Good luck with the start of school, I'm off to Veracruz this weekend to treat myself for studying hard these two months. Can you believe it's the last weekend here?!