Random impressions of school so far

As always I was a nervous wreck the night before all the kids came back from summer vacation. I tried to get my home teacher to give me a blessing but in the fashion of my lame ward I could get no one on the phone to help me out, so I self- medicated by giving myself some Tylenol PM and laying down. It did its job and the next morning I woke up refreshed. I just knew that if I didn't get some help I was going to toss and turn all night.

Aug 30Th 2010 was my third first day of being a teacher. It in its self went smoothly, but I just kept waiting for the class I knew that I was going to dislike. To my shock and awe; it never came!! Whoot! Whoot! This might be a fantastic year despite all of my fears. Some may say that you cant judge them on the first day, but when I consider last year and the utter insanity that occurred on their first day I think that I am safe in saying that this year will be better than last year. For those of you who don't know the story I will reiterate it for you. There is a lady at my school who teaches the freshman class and at the end of my first year of teaching she told me that the kids that I was getting the next year had been the worst kids she had EVER taught! She has been teaching for over 30 years! This did not bode well for my upcoming second year of teaching. She also told me that if I could make it though that year that I was golden and that they would probably be the worst class I had ever had. ( After the fact, I have to say that I agree!) I don't want you all to think that every kid was bad because they were not all horrible. I just had the unfortunate luck of ending every day with my two worst classes.

Back to this year. It has been two weeks and so far there is one class that will be a challenge, but I think it has more to do with how many are in the class rather than on their abilities. Its also after lunch with is always a hyper class. (I believe that I had Mr. Shepardsons class right after lunch my 11Th grade year and I also remember being really talkative in his class. How did I not ever get into trouble!?!?)
I have one class that is super quiet, as in there was one day that there was maybe one table taking during the entire class period! Another class is so full of life and fun! Its going to be an experience to remember!

Another thing that has been fun this year is realizing that several of my students are the younger siblings of students I had my first year at Chap. Most of these older siblings have also stopped by during their siblings class to tell them (and me) that it would only be a fun year and they would only get to have fun Miss Stout if they stayed on task and did the work without back talking. They all came with recommendations of how the younger sibling was going to learn lots and do fun projects and generally have a good time. It was really nice to hear these words of praise coming from my students from my first year of teaching. It was some nice validation, even if it is from a kid.

We were making our classroom social contracts at the beginning of the week and there was a kid in one of my classes that suggested that we be benevolent to one another. I was so shocked that this kid even knew that word, so I asked him "what the opposite of benevolent was?" and without skipping a beat he replied "malevolent"! Right then I knew I was going to like this class.

Student aides (SA's): I love having at least one student aide per day so that they can run all of my errands and such, but some how I ended up with one during 7Th period and two official SA's during 2Nd period, and one about once a week during 5Th period when she comes into help me during her lunch! All of them are former students of mine so that is nice. The funny situation with SA's this year started before school started when a former student and SA came to visit, (we will call him Zachary Qunito because that is the famous guy he looks like to me.) and help me set up my classroom. During the time he was helping me he asked if he could me my SA again. He had been a great SA last year and had been a great student the year before when he took my honors World History class; but the rules say that you can only be a SA once, so I had to tell him no. The look on his face was so sad! Some how I should have known that he would come up with a way to be in my class this year. We went and talked to his counselor and signed up for my geography class! Geography is kind of for the more remedial student. So when he showed up for class the first day I just laughed so hard that I almost peed!

There is a new guy who works across the hall from me and I think that I am beginning to like him. The first day we met he asked me for my number, but he hasn't used it yet, so I am trying to not get my hopes up. Its hard though when he is funny, tall, blond, from Chi-town, a math teacher ( you all know how dumb I am in the math department! I need a guy who can do all the difficult math crap in my life.) and the big disappointment is that he is not Mormon. I told my principle Kevin that he needed to hire me a good looking, tall Mormon guy so that I could get married. He did all hire all of those things; they just don't all reside in the same guy. Sad Day!
Well I will be sure to not wait so long to write again.