of frozen meals and hello kitty collectibles

Today marked the beginning of my second year as a teacher. The bell rang promptly at 7:15 and I found myself holding up a huge board with my last name on it, my call to all the freshmen in my student government advisory. The kids showed up (except for two) and we merrily found our way to my classroom, where I inundated their backpacks with codes of conduct, schedules, announcements, parent letters, among other things.

I bought 24 doughnuts for them, thinking 12 doughnuts for a 15 people class wouldn't be enough. At the end of my student government (from now on STUGO) class, I had 20. Yes. 20 doughnuts left. I proceeded to push doughnuts on my other two classes. The doughnuts were gone by fifth period.

After my stugo kids, I saw my first year kids. First period was ok. I already pinpointed the four douchey kids who will make my semester miserable. I also learned their names. I called them out on their rude behavior before the bell rang. I will proceed to bitch about them, I am sure. Stay tuned!

I had second hour off, because Spanish 2 kids only come in tuesday through friday. I had a line out the door, no joke, of kids coming in to complain about the fact that I am not teaching Spanish 3 this year. While flattering, I was also bummed to know that some other teacher gets to mold their minds this year. Some other teacher whose name is not Miss Bee.

Third period came with a bag full of surprises. After doing expectations and calling on the first five kids... I noticed a recurrent theme: "my name is ____ and i am ____ years old. i failed first year of Spanish." One after the other until we got to five students. I had to stop class and ask the kids to raise their hand if they failed first year of Spanish (very unorthodox, I know). FIFTEEN kids raised their hands, and I could see their comfort as they noticed that they were not alone. Fifteen kids is over half my class. I almost fell off my own feet. I now have to fight with their pre-conceived notions about the language, the class, the material, the teacher! It is going to be an uphill battle, I am sure... but I hope to prove to them that Spanish can be fun, and interesting, and useful! Wish me luck on this new adventure.

I proceeded to have my fourth hour off, which is when I normally eat lunch. I managed to drag both my mentor and the French teacher to have food with me. It was nice to just relax for a little bit.

Fifth hour started off with a scream. Literally. It is my fourth year Spanish kids. I started speaking Spanish right off the bat, to which I heard a scream "INGLES, POR FAVOR!" I about died laughing. The kids looked like deer in headlights. They were SO not expecting me to start blabbering in Spanish on and on. So I cut them some slack and did most of the class today in English and switched to Spanish later on. I have a feeling I will fall in love with this class.

Sixth hour was hall duty. The torment of my existence. Hated every minute of it, except for the minutes spent with former students and Sofía, the Ecuadorian exchange student.

Seventh hour was well spent, accompanied by my amazing student assistant, Miss Massa. We joked around, got stuff done and laughed out loud - the usual!

First day down, 179 to go! :) But who's counting, right?