first day of school

As far as first days go, today was surprisingly wonderful! (shockingly enough haha)

The first day is never fun. For one, the kids can come in the room at 7:30. That means you have to have something to keep them occupied independently from 7:30 until about 8:15 when announcements are over. That extra 20 minutes of kid time in the classroom is killer! Secondly, outclass is only 30 minutes long, not 45. That's another 15 minutes with kids that you don't normally have.  I like my breaks, they are necessary, the first day is hard haha.

Anyway, I had a bunch of very excited kids this morning.  One nice thing about teaching kids you already know is that there isn't much of a teacher-student learning curve.  They came in, we went quickly over rules, and we got working. We actually did real work today, not just busy work! It's not often you teach much of anything other than rules the first day, so I would call this a definite success.

And, I have to admit, it does make me feel pretty good to be stopped by MANY of these second graders so they can tell me, "It's not fair, I wish I could be in your class this year!" There is no shortage of love for me from these kids. I even got a first day gift from a student who is not in my class this year haha.

I'll update more later, but for now I have got to figure out what the heck we are going to do all day tomorrow! I have wasted 4 hours just sitting around this evening haha. Just wanted to let you know that I survived day one.  1 day down, 179 to go.

*edit*

I forgot to add that I got a great gift from another student that is in my class this year. Her mom is a teacher (on my team actually) so she knows what it's like. Anyway, she brought me some chocolate kisses, a scented oil diffuser to make my room smell nice, and a bottle of ibuprofen. I laughed out loud when I pulled that bottle of ibuprofen out of the gift bag. What an appropriate gift for the first day! haha