Survivor

That's what I feel like for this last week, a survivor. I had one of the hardest times getting back into teaching and at first I couldn't figure out why. After looking back, I hadn't really taught my class in about 8 weeks! I had my student teacher for six weeks (I taught off and on but gradually left it all to her), the week before Christmas Break I taught two days then had to be in SLC for two days then came back on Friday, the next week we "taught" on Monday (it's really more like babysitting that close to Christmas) and then we had a surprise snow day on Tuesday which started our break a day early. I finally came back a week and a half later. My students had "forgotten" all of my expectations and are more social than ever, I felt like a big meanie-head all week, but it should be better now (I hope). To top it all off, I have a sub tomorrow so I can do some reading tests with my students and the term ends on Thursday so I have parent-teacher conferences on Thursday night.

I got a new student on Tuesday, he seems like a great kid so far. I was really impressed with him the first day as he walked in to my room, right up to me and told me he was the new kid. He's definitely not very shy, but good-natured and polite. I then lost another student on Friday, this is the second one I've lost this year. My co-workers and I laugh about it because I always end up losing students so I always get any new move ins.

On a plus side, we started science this last week. Since science is tested and social studies is not, we choose to teach social studies for the first half of the year and then switch to science so they can more easily remember everything before taking the test. After testing is done, we go back to social studies. I love teaching science (almost as much as I love teaching math)! I think it's more of teaching them how to think and to take information and using it to answer more questions. This last week, we started with science process skills. This upcoming week, we start our main units and I am teaching microorganisms this year. I usually start the unit by telling my class that they will never want to eat ice cream, yogurt, bread, and a whole lot of other foods they love ever again and they will want to brush their teeth and shower all the time but not want to use any soaps or toothpaste. It really intrigues them and they start wondering why they would never want to participate in so much deliciousness again. I like to gross them out, but in the end, they play around with it as much as I do.