First day of school rapidly approaching

I've sat through meeting after meeting, met many very kind teachers, decorated and organized my room, planned curriculum and lessons, made seating charts, etc. All that remains is Open House tonight and a few loose ends to tie up. Then the kids come Tuesday.

My first impressions of this school have been nothing but positive. I was a little aprehensive moving from a huge school to one so small in such a small community but so far everyone has been so welcoming and willing to bend over backwards for others. I don't know how many times people have stopped me to check in, see how things were going, see if I had any questions, or make sure somebody had warned me about something coming up.

I do have to admit though that I feel very alone. I am a department of one. But when I get more established in what I am doing and find more connections in the area, it will be better. I've already been to the WAFLT website to preview what kinds of sessions will be at the annual conference. This year more than any I am really looking forward to the chance to connect with others and learn a few new tricks of the trade.

Website

I finally got a good start on my website (which is linked in the title). I am using Google Sites to create and host it and I really like it. It is super user friendly and allows me to do anything I want to with it.

Things are coming along

Now that I am in town I have had a chance to visit school, get more resources and figure out a few things. I feel a lot more comfortable about my Advanced Spanish curriculum and spent some time on my 8th Grade Exploratory curriculum. And today I spent some time putting together my website (which I have linked above). I have my syllabuses put together along with some of my first projects which I have posted there. Hopefully tomorrow, my school can post my website to their webpage.

I only have 7 students at this point in my Advanced Spanish class (and 9-12 in my other classes) and am so excited about how much I can do with my classes. My goal is to assign a short writing assignment and a speaking assessment (using Gcast) weekly to my Advanced Spanish class and giving the students some good feedback so that we can track the improvements. With this few students, I can really tailor the focus for each student.

I also plan to have all of my high school students keep a portfolio of writing assessments and feedback and speaking assessments. With such small classes we can do so much more!

Love and Logic

I finished reading Teaching with Love and Logic today.

One thing that I really took from the last part is the importance of a cool down time and not needing to enforce consequences immediately in all cases. I think back to times when I have been angry and in the heat of the moment. Those are not my best times. I often say things I don't mean and I'm not thinking clearly. If only in those cases I had taken a moment to step back and addressed the problem an hour later or the next day, I would have been able to think through it and come up with a better solution. The same is true for our kids. If it is something that can wait, then it is important to give them their thinking time. The book talks about just making an appointment with the kid at that time.