First Day of School

First day of school. I am actually writing this between classes while I wait for the curriculum to for the class to be faxed over to my site. I have taught two of my three classes for today and I haven't started crying yet. This year is definately going to be a handful. The kids are interesting to say the least. I suppose that it is similar to all the classes I was in when I was in highschool. The each class has its clowns and its model students. Being at passages with this student population there are things that I see and worry about that I hope my teachers never had to concern themselves over. It is hot and the AC is out, so naturally you want to open the windows...well that is fine, but I need to make sure that the window above the fire escape is not open becuase that could be a problem. Having to hlod on to penicils and erasers until we are actgually using them, thne collecting them again after class also seems a like overkill, but these people know what they are doing. It is also a little bit strange to have one or two of the staff memebers in the room who are responsible for removing the kids if they get over aggitaded. Who knows, this experince is going to be great. I do also have to get used to a completely different set of names from what I am used to. Say good by to John and Jane, because a regular name now is Tymaine, Shaquille, or Spanky. I teach math. I will be teaching algebra and middle school math. I am actually the only math teacher at my site at the moment. Woohoo. When was the last time that I worried about slope or linear equations. Well I guess I get to learn it all over again then teach my kids. At this point I have finished teaching my classes for the day and I have to say as a whole it was successful. Successful in that my lesson was about why math is important and not actually teaching them any new math concepts.

I also think that it is I can say a little bit about my new apartment. The apartment as a whole is great, but I do have two slight complaints/things that just make me laugh. The floor in the apartment is uneven. When I say uneven I mean that there is nothing that is flat at any point. In the living room the table leans to the left and when I go to sleep if I lay down on my bed in one direction my feet are definitely above my head. The other slight problem is the noise. We are right along a main road and there is always something going on outside. So now that I have said my little bit of negative about the apartment I feel that I should say that I love it. Apparently Labor Day is a bigger deal in my neighborhood than I have seen it be anywhere else. Both Sunday and Monday we had people out in the street everywhere. Sunday night there was music until about 5am. When I say music we are talking steel drums and all sorts of other fun stuff. People were dressed up like it was Mardi Gras or something. Full on bright Vegas showgirl outfits with feathers and all. Of course the body types aren't necessarily ones that you would want to see in such outfits, but the spirit of the whole thing was great. That is all I can think of for now. God Bless.

This preview for an upcoming film is pretty good. Definitely worth seeing if you care about education at all. It is a documentary looking at the charter school movement.

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2518550297/