First week of school

I have to stop labeling my blogposts "Day __" of being married, because facebook has kicked my wedding book app off of my profile! RUDE! Now I no longer have an easy way to calculate how many days I have been married. I shall start titling with different things instead.

I haven't written in a while, and I fear that my blog posts are going to be somewhat sparse this year due to the INSANITY that is this internship year. It is fun because I am finally doing what I want to do in life, but it is hard because it is a lot of work (full time job + course work), and in all of the business I am still trying to cultivate my baby marriage relationship. It's fun, just busy.

With that said, I think teaching sixth grade is going to be a blast. Not a whole lot has changed since I was in middle school. Yes, perhaps they have traded gel pens for silly bands and NSync for Justin Bieber, but still. Nothing is really new. There is still the queen bee who thinks she rules the school and her followers who inexplicably do everything she says. There are still the jocks who refuse to believe that a world exists outside the field/court. There are still the nerds who want to fit in but for some reason just can't. There are still the girls who think the boys are SO CUTE and will do anything to get their attention, but the boys so absolutely DO NOT care (once again: girls are not on the field/court, so they do not exist). Yep, sixth grade is sixth grade, no matter where you go or what year you have it in.

I love my students so far. I don't know a ton about them yet, but they all seem pretty cool. My CT (cooperating teacher) lets me be in front of class and teaching a lot, even from the first day, so that is very appreciated. I still get startled every time a student raises their hand and says, "Mrs. Webb?", but I'm pretty sure I will settle into that name fairly quickly. One of the funniest things that has happened to me so far was not even in the classroom. The week before school started we had a bunch of district meetings, and I figured I'd better bring a notebook to be super attentive and take notes. After all, I was going to be with a room full of teachers, so they would be very attentive and studious.

I could not have been more wrong. I walked into my first meeting, and all of the teachers were sitting in the back. No one would go up front. The speaker had to coax them for about five minutes to get them to move to the front of the auditorium to be more accessible. During the meetings, the teachers were completely inattentive. I saw a few teachers texting, a couple doodling (one made a nice drawing of a house on a cliff and birds flying over the water - I watched over his shoulder), and even a couple sleeping. I saw - and I swear I am not lying - two fifty-ish old teachers PASSING NOTES. As if they were in fourth grade again or something! The teachers made the worst students ever. It was HILARIOUS. I mentioned this to my CT and his friend after one of the meetings, and his friend said, "Oh yeah, teachers are totally the worst students. We give a speaker about one second and then say, 'You suck. F--- you.'" Yeah, teachers swear. WHAT?! They also party. Another fifth grade teacher at my school was talking about how he likes to go out and get drunk on the weekends. Ummm...he's like 40. And he has a family. The same guy walked into our classroom the other day and said, "Whoa!! That is a big a-- stack of papers! That should keep em busy for a while....oops...I mean 'enrich their minds.'" What is this about teachers that I never knew? It's like they have a secret life in front of students, and then behind their backs they are completely the antithesis of what they are telling their students to be. It's depressingly hypocritical and hilarious at the same time.

This is going to be a crazy year - I can feel it already. I can only hope that I find snippets of time with which to record all of it for future reflection (and laughter).