First Day of School

This post is going to be short and sweet, but I wanted to give a quick update after our first day of teaching the students.

We started our day with a bang. We rewrote the words the Paper Planes, by MIA and performed it in our morning meeting. Rewriting popular songs is something that they do a lot, and they seemed to really like it.

Overall, the day was good. I didn't have the problems that I expected I would have, with discipline, but we all encountered some different issues. We didn't have as many students as we expected, but we are hoping that more students will be coming in during this week.

Instead of discipline, my biggest concern is engaging the students and making sure they are interested in what we are doing. I finally understand the reason for all those exercises and activities in my Language Arts class because students this age have a hard time sustaining a conversation without a lot of prompts.

As much as you try to prepare for it, it is a surprise how much these kids have been through and the variation in their academic capability. We are having to rework our lessons plans to make sure that they can understand them, while at the same time trying to get them up to speed in all the topics. I'm very excited for the summer, but it is going to be challenging. Our days are very long. Today we woke up at 6:15 to leave by 7 and get to Sunflower at 7:30. The students arrived around 8, and we taught until we lefts at 4:30, so we got back to the house at around 5:30. Then I passed out and took a nap until 8:15. Hopefully I can get myself undercontrol so a 3 hr nap isn't necessary everyday, but we will see.

Also, very good news, today I walked with Hilary down the street to the Teach For America house (a house on our street where a lot of TFA teachers live) and I got some great advise for my reading class and just spent the last 2 hours revising my lesson plan.

Basically the day was good, the first day went by without any huge problems, mostly just that I need to make my lesson plans as interactive and accessible as possible. I'm really excited to get to know these kids better and keep working with them.