Hello again, fellow bloggers! The past couple days have been soooooo busy! Our district started back with inservices/workdays yesterday. It seems like my time has either been spent in meetings or trying to get my classroom technology up and going again. Makes me super glad that I sent my beginning of the year copies to the print shop at the end of last year and spent a few days last week getting my room ready to go! Yesterday, we had our district back-to-school breakfast and "welcome back" meeting. Like everyone else, our district is still in the learning phase of Common Core and a good chunk of our morning was spent on that. Our whole district will be spending all day tomorrow working with more Common Core. Like it or not, it's here! Our afternoon was supposed to be a workday in our rooms, but most of it was spent waiting in line to sign up for our Section 125 (insurance, 403B, etc.).
We also have a new district technology coordinator this year and he has made some MAJOR changes. This morning, he visited our building for an hour-long meeting to fill us in on all the changes. Most teachers in our building (and a couple other schools in the district) received new teacher computers over the summer, myself included. Our new computers are still waiting on the technology department to transfer all of our files from our old computers. Our new tech guy has also changed servers, changed our school email to web-based, changed our gradebook system, and implemented printing stations on each floor of our building (no more printers in individual classrooms :'( ). This all has gotten our more "seasoned" teachers in an uproar....how dare they make changes! I think once we are used to the changes, we will all like them (except the printer issue). We are now able to use Google Drive to share files, can create websites through Google, and can access YouTube for classroom use, so I'm excited about the changes. By the time I left school today, all of my minor technology issues were resolved, which makes me feel tons better about starting the new year. :)
After the tech meeting, all of us 6th grade teachers gathered for our annual meeting. We all try to be consistent with our rules and expectations and we try to do activities together as a grade level. Also our 6th graders come for orientation Monday morning, so we all needed to finalize plans for that. By the time all the meetings were done this morning, I had about an hour and a half to actually work in my room. This afternoon, we met as a building on (you guessed it) Common Core. We also spent part of that meeting discussing our district's new crisis plan. As part of the plan, each teacher was given a crisis kit....a bag with all kinds of goodies in it. Flashlight, glow sticks, rubber gloves, whistles, neon vests, rubber blankets, pens, pads of paper, bandages, hand sanitizer, you name it, we've got it! Because of the increase in school violence and disasters like the Joplin tornado (which happened about an hour and a half away from our town), it's better to be prepared. Although our joke was that if we didn't use the kit during the school year, we could probably have a fun time on the last day of school with everything in the kit. I can definitely see our choral teacher using the glow sticks for light sabers. :)
Our kids come on Tuesday, so I think I'm ready for them....or at least mostly ready. I think I will go work on my classroom website. :) Until next time!
~Mandy :)
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