Two days down, and I think my body's in shock.
Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating. I'm feeling my feet and legs ache... I'm feeling my tummy rumble (lunch was at 10:15!)... and I'm feeling my body all yucky and covered in sweat - gotta love having no a/c when it's 90+ outside! I literally was dripping around 7:45 this morning (but it actually got a little better as the day progressed because the humidity subsided a bit). And did I mention that I could totally go home and go to bed? 5:20 am is inhumane.
But my first two days back have gone pretty well. The kids seem nice (except one boy in a precalc class who I can already tell is super annoying... and I knew that after the first 10 minutes in my room!) and have been working for the most part. I assigned summer work for precalc and it was nice to jump right into factoring, solving, graphing, etc. without the normal foray into "here's what you should know" stuff. I'm giving a quiz tomorrow which could be interesting (especially after grading all of the kids' summer work!)... honestly, what kind of "honors" kid doesn't do half of their assigned work? Or just writes answers (which I posted online for them)? Maybe this will help my classes decrease in size a bit - I've got 32 in two of the classes and 27 in the other.
One thing that hasn't gone well is the technology component. (I know - shocker!) I had a wireless hub in my room which didn't seem to be working well except for the 5 minutes after I unplugged and replugged it. Our tech people came in and determined that the hub was causing problems all around me, so it's now gone. Yesterday was actually ok without it, but today's been a disaster. I wasn't able to wirelessly connect to my projector and have lost my connection to the network numerous times (which means I haven't been able to print or get online). The tech guy was just back in the room and tried a new hub to no avail. He said the engineer is supposed to come in on Monday and hopefully will get things back up like they're supposed to be... but I'm sure we all know that that's doubtful!
I'm a little at a loss with my Algebra 1 class. There are only 22 kids and mostly girls and they all seem very sweet. I gave them a fun problem to start class today (there are so many girls with cats and backpacks, etc. How many legs?) that they seemed to enjoy, then I handed out a skills review page just to see where they're at. It had adding and subtracting with negatives, order of ops, and some simplifying/distributing with variables. We got through most of the first two sections without a whole lot of problems although there was some surprise that yes, sometimes you will need to divide before multiplying, but what I heard from them with the algebra section let me know that we'll basically be starting from square one with variables. At least I know where they're at! Kinda.
I'm done rambling and I want to find some a/c. And a snack.
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