First Weeks of School

Hi everyone!  Daniel and I have survived our first three weeks of school!  I feel like I'm finally getting into a rhythm in my classes and getting to know my students.  This year, I'm teaching 9th grade English (38 students total), 11th grade History in Literature (14 students), 6th grade Creative Writing (8 students), and 8th grade Creative Writing (3 students).  I started out with 14 8th grade students, but I lost 11 of them during the first week as they switched music classes.  It's an interesting situation now, but I guess it means that those three will get a lot of individual attention (and unfortunately, it also means that Daniel and our friend Lee, who teach during different periods, have huge creative writing classes).  The 6th graders are so cute and, overall, really good writers, so class has been a lot of fun with them.  The 9th graders have been enjoying the Greek myths and the Odyssey so far, though 3/4 of the students in each class are boys, and some of them can get really rambunctious during the breaks between classes.  I am enjoying teaching the 11th graders, some of whom I taught last year.  We're reading The Fixer by Bernard Malamud and watching Fiddler on the Roof.  It's been fun so far--they knew almost nothing about Jews or the Russian Empire in the early 20th century--and I'm trying hard to foster better discussions.  The hardest thing for me the first couple of weeks was to see my old 9th graders (current 10th graders) in the hallways and to know that I couldn't teach them this year (even though I really wanted to).  Running into them is nice, but it's not the same as seeing them in class every week. :(

This year, I'm advising the literary magazine with Lee, which I'm looking forward to, and supervising the club that helps animal shelters (so I'll get to see more dogs!).  I'm also a homeroom teacher for 11th graders this year (instead of 9th graders).  I held short meetings with all of my homeroom students the past few weeks, which was helpful for me to better get to know them and their concerns about the year.  I certainly do not envy the fact that they are taking the PSAT, SAT, and SAT IIs (and possibly a couple APs) this year.  This week, we'll be gone for three days on an all-secondary retreat.  We're actually going back to the same place where we had our faculty retreat this year, which is on the East Coast.  I hope that all of us will have fun (it seems like most of the time, we'll just be supervising the students).  Daniel, Lee, Meghan, and I wrote a faculty skit for the retreat, which I'm hoping will be funny.  We've enjoyed hanging out with our friends so far (so much fun!), though some weekend nights I've been too tired to do anything.  The first weeks of school are so exhausting--mainly because we have to get used to standing on our feet most of the day again and waking up early.  I also still have to get completely used to my schedule this year.  Last year, I had the first two periods free every day, which was really nice, but now I teach 1st period every day, which means that I have to be ready for when my students start coming in 10-15 minutes early.  And now that my free periods are later in the day, I have to get better about using that time productively (instead of just wanting to relax after a long day). 

The only other piece of news I can think of is that we also survived a typhoon on Thursday.  When I woke up, the wind was blowing so hard (I've never seen trees shake like that before).  I went to the bus stop and got on the bus, but after one stop, the driver started yelling at us in Korean and everyone else starting getting off--it turns out that trees had fallen and blocked some of the roads.  I walked quickly to school the rest of the way, trying to avoid branches and leaves on the sidewalks.  By the time I got to school, my hair was very messy (after blowing around in the wind) and my face was red.  I quickly got ready for class, but when the bell rang at 8:10, I only had two of my eight students (almost all of the buses were late).  By the end of the period, everyone else had shown up, but it was a little hard to teach that morning.  Oh well!  We hope you're all doing well!

Love,
Leslie