Just so that ya’ll know that I am not just obsessed with my romantic life…

The year has started well. I’ve had kidlets for two weeks and I’m already a little sad that I only get them for 172 more days. 🙁 That isn’t enough time.

I seem to have a generally good crop of kids. Comp & Lit is not terribly motivated, but they seem to be willing to work when I tell them to. We are working on motivation though. It’s a goal. My English 3 classes are generally decent. I have a couple of talkers in each class and a few lazy snots, but not many. Mostly we seem to be warming up to one another. It is kind of funny that if I have an awful day with one period the next day they are super great. I know that a lot of it depends on my own attitude on a given day, and I am trying very hard to work on that. I’ve only had to yell at three kids so far and they have been good since. Yay! Although my aide has detention on Tuesday because the shit won’t carry the classroom pass when he runs errands. (He earned this today. Cause I just got the pass *today*. I had him last year and so we get along and have lots of struggles with “who is in charge.” S’all good though.)

We start Writers Workshop today and I have their assessment packets finally. I get to do my first round of big grading this afternoon. It’s so exciting! heh. The pile is somewhat intimidating when I have this many students… It’ll be good though. I have confidence in them!

In block letters across the front of my room I tacked up: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life! What do you want to accomplish?” I ask different kids to respond to it almost every day. I’m getting some good answers and some smart ass answers. It’s a good tool though. I don’t know all of their names yet. I know about half. *sigh* That is not enough! I know the talkers and the ones with weird names. I’m having trouble with my 4 Breanna/Briana/Breanas. And I have 5 Michaels. And Kelsey/Chelsey/Kaylee/Cayleigh. And three Ashley/Ashleighs. Oy. Guess what names I won’t pick for my kids? The weird thing is–I feel awkward about talking about the really cool and unique names because that feels like I’m saying too much about a person. How odd.

But it’s going well. I am a full month ahead on planning for English 3 and I’m only two days ahead on Comp & Lit but the district is giving me textbook training on Tuesday and it seems dumb to go far ahead…