Yo Teach

Well, 2 days of school down....180 to go...
Ha, I'm not really counting down yet (yet possibly being the key word). My dad asked me to rate the first 2 days on a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being fantastically wonderful, 1 being thinking about looking for another job, and soon) and I give them a nice round 6. Overall the days were good. I only have one period that was terrible (on the first day of school too!)...7th period has a big group of boys who are apparently notorious for being obnoxious...and when I say obnoxious, I mean that I had absolutely no control over the class on that first day. Who gives the teacher a hard time on the first day!? My first mistake was to let them sit wherever they wanted...so yesterday (day 2), I revised that and made them sit where I wanted them, all those boys spread out. I also wrote them a letter stating that the behavior on the first day was unacceptable and that they were now going to have a citizenship grade...made them read and sign the bottom of the letter. Ha, it kinda cracks me up because acting mean and strict is so not my personality. I am really going to have to improve my acting skills this year! Yesterday was definitely better with them, although not fantastic...we shall see. This week I think I'm going to have to be real mean in that class...maybe they'll shape up then and we'll end up having a great year. Other than 7th period, my classes were pretty good. It's crazy how differently each class responds to the exact same lesson plan. I have 7th graders, 8th graders, and one high school class with a mix of 9th, 10th, and 11th graders. Some of the classes loved what we did, told me it was fun and interesting. Other classes appeared to be bored out of their minds, hated it. Weird... oh well, that's probably the last time I'll get to do the same thing in every class anyway since I have middle school health, and 8th grade science which is mainly chem and physics, and earth science which is geology, meteorology, astronomy, oceanography. Altogether it's going to make for a crazy year as far as I'm concerned! A couple of the classes have responded so well to me already though that it makes me think it's going to be a fun year too.
Ok, so here's the funny story for the 2 days of school so far: on Thursday, first day, first period, I had them go around and tell me their name and something unique about them. So we get to one of the kids and he says "My name is Mike and I just turned emo." So I, thinking maybe I didn't hear him correctly, ask him to repeat that and he says "Yeah, I just turned emo." The other kids join in too and say "It's true miss, he just became emo." So I am trying desperately not to laugh...and we move on to the next kid. But Mike was just so cute, either he didn't know that he's not supposed to admit to turning "emo" (emo kids were always like that, don't you know, they do NOT admit to deciding to be emo)...or maybe he just doesn't care and is one of those kids that'll say anything...ha, so cute. I know I'm not supposed to have favorites, but so far that first period is my favorite because it's almost entirely made up of kids like Mike...and yesterday they ran with the lesson, had fun with it...they're gonna be a great way to start the day!