The first day a school brought a plethora of personal challenges for me. First of all, I was not able to get my classroom up to my standards. There was not enough time for me to singlehandedly accomplish this. In addition. the mountains of junk that I had requested to be removed from my room to storage was still there and it stayed there for several more days. This junk was an eyesore. I reluctantly threw some of it away even though I thought other teachers might want it. The day before the kids were scheduled to come to school I received my roster of 38 students. I immediately requested more desks to be placed in my classroom to accommodate each student.
On the very first day of school 43 kids showed. For some reason all of these students received mailings from the school stating that they were in my room. I guess some changes occurred over the summer and parents were not notified. 5 of those kids were my students from last year but they were on my colleague's roster. At least they are literally right next door and I still get to see them all the time. Once two new students joined my class I had 40 kids!
On the first day of school, two of my new girls wore matching black t-shirts with large white text saying, "YOU CAN'T SIT WITH US." I was kind of shocked by this but then I remembered my last visit to the mall. The juniors section is loaded with shirts like this. I will encourage them to save those shirts for the weekend, I really don't need a set of mean girls in my class. That is not the type of community I am trying to create.
The following day I read the class "How Full is Your Bucket?" They loved it and wanted to make their own buckets. I purchased styrofoam cups for the kids to decorate and hang. One student wrote "#youcan'tsitwithus" on her bucket. Social media has changed a lot and these youngsters have access. I think these girls and I need to have a private lunch session.
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