week 2 school update

The second week of the school year is completed and I'm T-I-R-E-D!

This week was short because of Labor Day and it went by quite fast; faster than the first week.

I did leave school today until about 4, so I was able to get a lot done after our meetings were over at 2:30. Here's just a quick rundown of some of this week's happenings.

~ School picture day is next Thursday, Sept. 11. I had to make a schedule for the English teachers to follow on that day. I feel ready for it...ready for it to be over, that is. It's not that it is necessarily a hard day, it just takes a lot of energy and organization. I'll get a sub and prep my darlings for the day. This year the students get to pick their background color AND their pose, which will make for an interesting experience.

~ My students have been working on learning the first set of prefixes and suffixes this week. We made note cards, which was a big more time-consuming and painful than I anticipated. It didn't just take one day for them to make the card, it took two! There are only 6 prefixes/suffixes total, but it was a challenge to get them all to understand the concept of putting the prefix/suffix on one side and the definition/meaning on the other. I had them put the cards together with those ring clasps and I laughed inside everytime a student said, "These things are SO cool!" What's so cool about a ring clasp??

~ 2nd and 3rd period classes are so fun. They laugh at my jokes (which are kinda lame!) and participate perfectly (that is, so far anyway). They follow instructions and actually seem to be learning something. 4th period is boring and quiet and really, really shy (again, that is, so far anyway). 6th period is crazy-hyper...almost like taming 31 lions at the same time. There are a lot of complainers and needy students in 6th period, but I can see that they might become one of my favorite bunches. 7th period seems to have all the "cool" kids. They all seem like the popular type with lots of friends and the attitude that goes with being popular. They enjoy rolling their eyes and scoff at my jokes (mean!) They are the group of students who will drag their heels in the ground about getting work done and will most likely wait until the last minute to show any sort of productivity.

~ My media productions staff this year is awesome. They're quiet and willing to actually write in the journalistic form. They seem eager to get started on the newspaper and yearbook and if I could just get them to make a peep every once in a while, we'd be perfect!

~ Today I had my 8th graders write 6-word autobiographies. This is something I actually did last year when my favorite columnist called for readers to send in their own 6-word autobiographies. I made up a little worksheet and several funny examples (for Brittany Spears: Shaved head. Yeah, might be crazy; Plumber: Fix broken toilets, get paid crap.) and explained the trickery involved (apparently it's really hard for the brain to get a 6-word autobiography--a 5 or 7 word autobiography is easier). Some took to it right away and actually came up with very clever sentences. Others totally freaked out and couldn't seem to get their brains to wrap around the concept. It was a fun experiment and most of the students got a kick out of the challenge (the fact that I totally played up the whole idea about it only being 6 words and not a paragraph really excited them).

~ We have a new tardy policy at school. So far it's working wonderfully. Basically, after so many tardies a student is required to serve a Friday school, where they stay after school on Friday for 3 hours. I've never seen so many little mustangs run to class so fast! It's kind of fun, actually, to see that most of them are at least trying to care. I know that there will be some to test the policy at first, but I really hope it lowers the overall number of tardies at WL.

I started my new class for my Master's program. It's linguistics. Fun, right??!?!?!?!?! I started working on this week's assignment last night, but decided to give myself a Friday break and will finish it up tomorow. Ben and I are going out with some friends tonight to Olive Garden to get the all you can eat pasta bar...just what I need, mind you, is more freaking carbs!!!

Happy weekend to all.
Oh, and if you're still reading, I've posted two other posts today, which are below this post. Wow, I'm ambitious today!