General Confusion

Where does the time go?  It is amazing how quickly time flies, especially when you feel like you have a thousand things to do and you are accomplishing none of them.  I think every first year teacher goes through these feelings of general confusion and wasted time.  I'm so used to being extremely productive that it is weird to feel unproductive.  As a new teacher, I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, and even if I knew what I was supposed to be doing, I wouldn't know exactly how to do it.  I suppose the best way to improve is by doing, failing, then learning from your failures.

My second day seemed to go better than the first day, especially with how I relate to my students.  I had some good response to my lame sense of humor in the morning, and I really felt comfortable in front of the class.  In my morning classes, I was able to get almost every student's name from memory after playing a quick name game.  I think that taking the time to do these get-to-know-you activities at the beginning of the year is vital.  There is nothing so demeaning to a student as having a teacher that doesn't know your name.  Knowing your students' names says, "I see you. I know you are here."   That's a start, at least.

I am still amazed at teachers who are able to bring that energy to every class period, every day, every week, all year long.  I felt my energy drop off a bit in the afternoon, after lunch.  I think the kids felt it, and they were my sleepy class yesterday, too.  I need to find a way to spice things up after lunch, so the students can be engaged.  Honestly, I need the spice as much as my students do.  I hate teaching boring lessons, and I feed off the energy of the class.  It could be that the kids were just tired of hearing every teacher's back to school expectations spiel, so I'm going to cut myself a little slack.

Tomorrow I will get started on content, and the kids seem ready for it.  They jumped at the opportunity to do a little math (probably because they were tired of hearing me talk about respect and behavior), so I think they will be excited to learn some new stuff.  I'm excited to go home and relax. 

Till tomorrow!