Wednesday, September 6, 2017

First Weeks

Wow! We're a week and a half into the new school year.  I'm that beginning of the year tired that teachers know so well.  It's been a better start to the year than I've had a long while.

Last week, students came to the library for the first time.  I read to them.  They loved it and so did I!  I don't know who decided that middle schoolers didn't like to be read to but they are wrong.  Thankfully, I chose to read each grade level a different book.  By the end of each day, I was ready to be done with that book.  What I really loved was hearing from parents at Meet the Raider that their kiddo said "Mrs. Bartis is the librarian now and she read to us today!"

I could not have read to all these classes without our new library aide. We got so, so, so lucky when we hired an aide for the library at the dead last minute.  She is amazing! She's so helpful and relieves so much stress.  She's taken over video announcements.  I loved doing announcements but it was time consuming.  She's stepped in and rocked it.

In years past, the first days of school were dominated with a program that I ran at school called Tech Camp.  This year we changed it a bit and the result was much less stressful.

The boys also had a great week.  B's new behavior therapist told me towards the end of the week, "Your kid is killing it!"  I did not receive any phone calls or emails about B's behavior. Woowhoo!! Killing it, indeed!

Zac kept up with his summer reading project for the first week and a half.  That's quite an accomplishment for an 8th grade boy! The rest of his first week and a half was "good" and "fine".

Sambo seems to be perfectly at home in his second year of high school.  I shouldn't be but I was amazed that he decided on the second day that he needed to get into honors Chemistry (he'd been in honors Biology last year but we let him drop to regular Chemistry).  And then proceed to take care of everything to make that happen: talk to the teacher about honors and his dyslexia accommodations and fill out the counselor's form to get switched.

I'm feeling good about this year.  We learn and grow every year.  It's just that some years the growing pains seem to be more painful.  This year feels like it the growing pains might be less painful and more fun!

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