I survived the first TWO days of the new school year! We do things a little differently here at school. During the first week, we get so many new kids with no transcripts that instead of automatically putting kids into classes and hoping they are right, we get to know them, their likes and dislikes, their strengths and weaknesses, test them in reading, writing and math... THEN make a schedule WITH them. It takes usually the whole first week, but we have fewer kids failing classes and going to them more often because they have a say in what they take.
Each teacher at my school has a class called Pathways. It is like a homeroom class. We act as counselor, college and career counselor, parent, friend. We call it Pathways, because we help them create a "pathway" to graduating high school and succeeding after. This year I have A LOT of seniors. Last year I had no seniors and this year, I have 12 out of 18!!! This is going to be one crazy year but one I am so very excited about.
Today we are finishing up our testing and getting to know each other, with games of kickball and softball at Sunshine Park which is not too far from us. We take all of our kids over, all ~170 of them, and let them have fun as one last hurrah before classes begin on Monday.
I am not as prepared for my classes as I thought I would be. I am teaching World History and Literature this year which is a class I have not taught before but I am very excited about it. I have a lot of fun activities planned and since I get two whole class periods with them instead of one, I am able to do more hands on projects. One big project that the kids know about but are not looking forward too is their Final project. This is a Book report that will take around 4 weeks to do. I will help them with it the whole way and since many of them will not be able to or willing to read at home, I have blocked two weeks out just for reading in class.
Well this is it for this morning anyways. I will write again later tonight!
Chelsea
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