My first day of school

Okay, I survived my first day of school and by the time that the first recess had rolled around I had totally ditched my lesson plans for the day and was just in survival mode.  Fortunately, by lunch time things had calmed down and the other teacher gave me a pep talk and the afternoon was much better.  I had to practice and practice and practice and practice the routines some more.  I have to tell you that these kids struggle with change.  Acquiring a new teacher and having to go through a new routine is like pulling teeth!!  They struggle and resist change at all costs.  The culture of these kids thrives on routine and purpose.  So, tomorrow and Friday I am going to do the routine over and over so that they get used to what I expect.  They are very opinionated and are very used to announcing to the world their opinions with no concequences.  Shouting out drives me crazy and so one of the behaviors that we practiced over and over and over today is how to raise hands without talking and wait to be called on. Struggle.  I do really have a nice group of kids though.  It is interesting getting used to some of the cultural norms that exist on the colony.  The kids usually don't listen to music but somehow they know all about the different artists! Somehow they found out that I like country music and they asked me today if I like Lyal Lovett, Alan Jackson, George Jones, George Strait and some other singer. One girl wanted to know if I got to watch the Mariners often and one of the boys wanted to know if Ichiro was my favorite player.  I think I was asked about the Seahawks too.  These kids know a lot of information even though they are not exposed to the news of what we English folk know as day to day life.  I had another long day after school today but I feel better about how tomorrow goes and I have a different strategy about how I am going to cram four lessons of reading and English and Math into my day before lunch with a ten minute break in the middle. But! The other teacher was to my rescue today to assure me that I was doing everything I needed to for my classroom to run.  Her pep talk was very helpful and assured me that it wasn't me that was nervous, it was also the kids. A new teacher makes them very curious and also a bit crazy I think.  All in all, at least with nearly passing out in the morning from the temperature of the room rising so quickly, and then the kids switching names on me, and trying to distract me at all costs, I think my day was successful.  Nobody got hurt, each kid learned something and I got some viable data worthy work out of the kids!! Now, data worthy work is to be held in high esteem over here with the district going to the RTI model of helping kids learn.  This is the training that I went through for two days and I really like it.  It is all about creating a plan and helping the kids before they are identified with SpEd and then creating a plan after a LD is discovered.  Basically, since many of the kids who are identified SpEd at the elementary level truly are not SpEd material, but this is how they qualify for help and additional learning time the model that Ryegate is using now will prevent all the paperwork that goes into a SpEd referral because a plan will already be in place when a student is ideintified as SpEd and therefore the testing that would be done with the old model no longer needs to be done. Run on sentence, I know..I am not in teacher mode right now dispite my little teacher soap box there. I think that is about all.  I got the kids started on social studies and sort of math, and tomorrow I am going to try to throw reading and English into the bunch. Wish me luck!