Well, today was the big day. My first real day of teaching and having my own class. It was truly exhausting. I see a lot of areas where I can improve and change already but overall I think it was successful. My homeroom is pretty chatty and at the end of the day I'd written seven names on the board as warnings. I'm trying to start out strict and lighten up as needed.

I also teach reading and social studies/science (on a 4 week rotating basis between those last two) to another class. That class was very well-behaved and that freed me up to have more fun and we all had fun together.

This morning I was greeted at the door by Wal-Mart greeters handing out stickers. They were accompanying some dude dressed up in a big Tony the Tiger costume who was in the process of taking pictures with kids. "Eat your cereal, tikes, and then tell mom and dad to buy you some more!"

I went to the gym (where the kids go at the beginning of school every morning) and asked my kids if they saw Tony the Tiger. They answered with "His head is bigger than his body" and "He had a big zipper on his back." Budding cynics, all of them. In the meantime the kindergarteners now probably all believe that all tigers have zippers on their backs. At the end of morning assembly Tony and his crew came in and had a drawing for a boombox. One of my kids won it. I tried to convince her that it actually meant her teacher won it but she wasn't buying...so I just took it by force. Not really.

After school today I had a msg from a parent. I called her and she told me my student was crying because she couldn't remember what her homework was:

Lesson 1 - Make students write down all homework.

Lesson 2 - Don't call parents back.

Ok, scratch lesson 2...that probably wouldn't work out. Actually the mom was really nice.

The only possible problem that I'm foreseeing is that I don't think a block of 1 hour and 20 minutes is enough time to competently teach both reading and social studies, but the other teachers tell me that it will work out and I'll get the hang of it. We'll see.

Until next time...