First Day of School!

What could be more exciting than the first day of sixth grade? Being the student teacher for a sixth grade class? Actually, I was excited about meeting the kids and embarking on my latest student teaching experience, but strangely relaxed. I like kids - even teens and pre-teens, and I knew that my responsibilities today were limited. My master teacher had communicated her desire to "set the tone" for the year and asked that I stay somewhat in the background at the beginning. My job was to assist her and individual students as needed. For example, I made the rounds while students worked on their "Hopes and Dreams" pages and later took digital photos to accompany the students' acrostics.

Nonetheless, at the end of the day, I felt that I had begun to develop a sense of what the culture of the class might be like, and had begun to learn a little about the individual students. Perhaps most surprisingly, the students arrived "squirrelly." We had both expected a brief honeymoon period of quiet cooperation, but several of the kids had to be called out for chatty or inattentive behavior within the first hour. When we picked up the class from music, we learned that they had missed participating in a fun activity because of poor attention (hour two of the school year). About half of the students had been together last year with the same teacher, and perhaps they were just too comfortable. They settled in a little as the day went on, and the day ended on a positive note with successful cooperation in an all class activity. The students worked together to put in order about 25 pages from a book titled "Zoom" by Banzai. (Based on a "six traits" writing organization lesson, the tasks requires the students to sequence the wordless pages from a book. The teacher had previously purchased two copies of the book, removing and laminating the pages from one. Fabulous book!)

I received my first "side hug" from a student today whom I had met at "meet and greet" on Thursday. She gave me a big smile when she saw me this morning and then hugged me. Another student declared that I would "pass" as a teacher because I said that my favorite pie was blackberry (while sitting in the interview chair). I know there will be plenty of bumps in the road, but today was a nice start to the year.