The First Week

I had a lot to write over the last week, but I have been consumed with keeping up, being exhausted and sickness. Yes, I said sickness. There is a stomach bug going around here. I had one 6th grader absent on the third day of school, and then I suffered through school the next day. I still don't feel great, but I am much better than I was. Many of the prayer requests at the end of this week were for sickness in various families as well, so hopefully other kids won't be dropping like flies this next week.

Overall things have gone pretty well as far as my class is concerned. I am very blessed to have great kids that are well behaved and stay on task for the most part. It's a good thing too because I am so lost with all the paperwork and curriculum particulars. I still hardly have any teacher's editions for 6th grade, and much of what I do have is outdated and doesn't go with the textbooks they do have. So, I have to totally make up their reading lessons/pacing from the student text and I will be doing their math homework this weekend so I can grade it.

Even the grading is different than I'm familar with. Every week we send home a "packet" of their quizzes/tests/drills with a cover sheet that tells what quizzes they will have for the next week, their behavior grade, and any other notes. On their quizzes, we can't just have their score at the top (like I would put in the gradebook) we apparently need to put what grade that score means. Some classes has weighted grading for tests/quizzes I think, and I have no idea how to do that.

I'm mostly finding that I just don't have time to do anything. I can't keep on schedule, no matter how hard I try. We seem to hardly have time for science and social studies. I've decided for sure that I will do this every other day instead of try to do both every day. We haven't gotten to do any read alouds, DEAR time or class meetings. And I definitely don't have any time for grading, etc. or even really sitting down since I'm always teaching between the two grades. Maybe in the coming weeks some things will get smoother, and we'll actually get some things done faster. I'm sure having the teacher's editions will help in that at least. I also need to figure out how to ever have the kids books to record scores since we're not supposed to tear the pages out.

I think we're going to have another 6th grader next week, so that will make 7 kids total. That will be awesome. Here's hoping that he's a good kid. Anyway, there's more I have thought about on individual days, but my theme right now is there's so much fun things I want to do and instead I feel like I'm drowning in confusion and work. I can't say it was a bad week, although not being sick would be nice, it just didn't meet my ideal of what school should really be or what I should really be as a teacher.