A New Year! School year that is...

First week of school is officially over! It has been a successful beginning in my eyes. I have about 18 students that I work with - ranging in grades 2 through 6. Ability levels ranging from about 1st to 6th. Most I only see for 30 minutes daily and a few others anywhere from 1 hour to 3 hours a day. Scheduling is always a beast but I think I got it figured out! And it only took me a few days! Just so you know what scheduling involves I must take into account these things before grouping students in half hour blocks throughout the day: recess, PE, specialty classes, General Ed. teacher preferences, student ability level, student peer/age groups (don't want to group a 2nd with a 6th!), what they are serviced for (reading, writing, math), how long they are with me a day, IEP goals... and I think that's it.... haha. Pretty crazy right? Why did I go into this field!

I have fantastic students this year, though. I'm at a new school, new staff, new students - I'm very excited to get going with the curriculem and actually teaching! For these first few days we have only reviewed rules and routined of the classroom - necessary. Boring, but very necessary! So far I have yet to see any behaviors that I can't manage which puts a HUGE smile on my face. I have a lot of hope for a great year!!

I need to take some pictures or my quaint, cute room - hopefully soon. But, to give you an idea - the theme is "Flying High" using hot air balloons :) Love it!

Nothing else new to report really. Mostly my life as of late has been consumed with school preparations, testing, scheduling etc... That said, I actually have been a lot less stressed about everything than I expected! (so far... hope I didn't just curse myself... blast...) I can do my school work at school, do a little bit at home when neccessary and then have time for myself in the evening. It's fantastic!

School Days, school days

I'm not even sure that anyone actually reads my posts, but here is a brief update of whats going on anyway!!

I got back from a fantastic vacation to Saipan a couple of weeks ago. My trip included para sailing, snorkeling, laying on the beach, collecting seashells and eating great food! It was much needed - it was hard to come back to real life. Which brings me to the 'what's going on in real life' segment of my post.... School! I will begin teaching at Hillcrest Elementary school on August 17 so I have been preparing by attending all sorts of meetings! I went to Core Academny for three days of curriculum training in Math which was a lot of fun/gave me good ideas. Then I moved on to the New Teacher training provided by the district. Soo great! It took a lot of time and energy (8:30-3:30 for 7 days) but I was happy for the great training! I'm feeling a lot better about taking over the resource class at my new school and confident that I will be well prepared....or at least as well prepared as a first-and-a-half year teacher can be!
I have been in my classroom preparing for the past few days, but I still have a ton of things to do! I'm now down to about 10 days, so I hope I can squeeze in everything I need to!

I will be going on a campout in St. George this weekend with some friends - so I do get on last hoorah before hitting it hard in the classroom.

Well - I didn't promise anything exciting to say, so I hope no one is dissapointed! I'll try to post some pictures next time, or change my font, or something.....you know... to keep all my readers coming back for more... haha.