Monday, July 28, 2008

Back to School


Today was my first day back at school after a whopping four weeks off.

Here were the highlights:


...three classes of fourth graders who were told that they would be learning how to draw more realistically this year. They always get excited hearing that. And they shock themselves at actually doing drawings that are a leap ahead of what they did just a month ago.
...greeting students in the hallway first thing in the morning. Specialist teachers were to direct and assist kiddies, while keeping their parents from following them down the hall. It was fairly astonishing to me the number of parents who were determined to go to their kiddies' classrooms anyway, and who would try to debate it with me. (We had Open House on Friday so that everyone could check out the rooms, teachers, etc, which should alleviate the need to do that on the first day of school.) I even saw a couple of parents returning from the classrooms, though they had run a gauntlet of other teachers on their way. Sneaky.

...the first class of nine year olds who seemed to be less than thrilled at sitting in a classroom... in the middle of summer... at 8:15 in the morning. They weren't surly or anything, but their initial expressions gave me pause. As class wore on, and things got a little more relaxed, they lightened up.
...computer diagnosis of NOT CONTAGIOUS! WOOO HOO!!! (I had earned the nickname of Typhoid Mary after causing three or four laptops to become nonfunctioning, big grey paperweights. Thankfully, the problem turned out to not be viral, and the wackiness was cleaned up.) (Thank you, Mr. Uber SBIT!)
It was a good day. Not traumatic as I always fear the first day will be. I'll be back in the swing of things in no time flat.
P.S. The manakins above remind me of China's Terracotta Army.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Love the figure drawing! We call those parents the hover parents. The ones that can't let their kids do anything for themselves. Sometimes I feel like the neglectful parent because we make them do things like walk home from school or practice (HORRORS!!) or make them do without if they forget something or not call them the entire time they are at camp.