Back to the Grind

Well, it's official, my summer is over! Oh, well, in 10 months I'll get another one. So here's what's been going on the last 2 weeks.

First I worked with 2 new 6th grade teachers for a couple of days. Every year our new teachers go through a district run program called TTIP-Tracy Teacher Induction Program. For a day and a half content specialists (that's me, ha!) help them look at the curriculum and make their first lesson plans and year-long plans.

This past week was all about WEB--Where Everybody Belongs. This is a program that we started using about 5 years ago at our middle school. We spend 2 mornings from 8-12:00 training 8th graders to work with and mentor 6th graders. This year we had 44 8th graders at the WEB training. On Friday all 6th graders were invited to come to school from 8-1:00. We do a huge assembly until about 9:30 that's full of fun games and songs. Then 2 8th graders take 8-12 6th graders to do the activities with them that they learned earlier in the week. They get to know the kids and tell them about our school and give them a tour. We finish the day with another short assembly and then a BBQ outdoors. It takes a lot of planning for this and I'm so grateful that I have my co-leaders Lisa and Holly helping me. The first year we did this I was the only one trained so I had to do everything!!!! Getting up in front of 300 kids and being silly and goofy is way out of my comfort zone, but I do it! Lisa is much better at it than I am!!! Thankfully she loves to do it.

Monday this week is our "district day" where we have district meetings. Lisa, George, and I are in charge of the meeting at our site on Monday morning. Then I'm done with leadership things and I can concentrate on my room and lesson plans!

Tuesday we have a staff meeting and then we get time in our rooms. Wednesday the kids come! Way too early for me, but we do get a week off for Thanksgiving, 2 weeks for Christmas, a week at Easter and every national holiday except Columbus Day, so it all works out in the end.