First Day Back

Today was the day teachers report back to school. In honor of this, I will (attempt) to post every day of the school year. And no cheating by posting just a sentence. I predict it will help my sanity immensely. Students return in a week, although my own precious offspring don't go back until a week after that.

I even got to school on time, via bicycle in an air quality alert that can best be described as "extra chunky." I had trouble breathing, both ways. Temps in the low 100s, dew point excessively high. But I made it. And back.

Lots of sitting and meeting and meetings. Lots of new faces, but only one brand-new teacher (first year teaching), and some veterans with good reputations. Emphasis today was on accountability, potential visits from the new superintendent, and new "zero tolerance" edicts that haven't worked in the past. Zero tolerance for cell phones. Zero tolerance for kids who violate or stretch the dress code. I will wait and see, although I am a firm believer in enforcing the small rules to make a statement about how big rules will be enforced.

The big surprise of the day, for me, was being named team leader of my group of 4. In actuality it isn't really an honor, as it results in more work, but at the same time it is a vote of confidence for my organizational skills and responsibility. Positive attitude - check!

And as part of broadening my social horizons, I had lunch with a teacher I am good friends with, plus a teacher on my hall who I have known, but not really socialized with, and a teacher new to the school who is on my team. Yay me! My team is also unusual in that it is 3 men and 1 woman. The downside of this - they may toss us many of the difficult students.

Test scores from last year show some very good gains in 6th grade math. From 84% proficient to 88%, or something like that. No idea if this is skewed by the one teacher on the inclusion team raising the scores of the inclusion students by 44% (I don't know whether that handful moving that far would affect the overall grade, but it probably doesn't account for all of it.) Maybe later this week I will peek at a breakdown of each class, to see how I did. It doesn't matter so much, as I changed grades, and also am changing my methods a bit. But I plan to do better.