Hot and Cranky, but I Made it Through

I still want to do a couple of summer posts, but I haven't had time to edit the pictures.  Part of the problem is that I start sorting through them and either my adorable little son, who is obsessed with buttons, pushes my power button, or my computer overheats and shuts down.  It is more than a little frustrating.  This week was the official end of summer.  I spent the entire week at work.  It was hot and miserable.  My classroom was around 86 degrees.  I had a fan, but it just moved the air around, it didn't cool at all.  The first week  is always hard, but I was extra exhausted this time.  It didn't help that my car was over a hundred degrees when I would start to drive home, and then my house was hot.  I would come home and eat, get the kids ready for bed, and basically collapse.  One the up side, I think that I have been sleeping more soundly. They actually cancelled the Hello Dance and our friday meetings because it was too hot.

There are a few kids I am a little worried about and one period that is already a little noisy, which is a bad sign on the first week, but on the whole I think that I have pretty good classes this year.  I have 8th and 9th graders.  I enjoy the 9th graders because I know quite a few of them, and most of them have said they are excited to have me again.  Of course any who had problems would have transferred, which is fine with me. Hopefully next week will be cooler.  I am also getting into my curriculum, which is nice.  I am really not a fan of the get to know you first week activities, but if you don't do them, how are you supposed to get to know almost 200 new students?  I have about 75 8th graders of whom I had previously met about 5-10.  I have about 95 9th graders, of whom I had previously met about 60. So it isn't quite that bad, but it seems like the more years I teach the worse my memory gets. I have students from this last year stopping by to say hi, and I can't remember their names. I had a couple of 9th graders yesterday, who I had last year, that I was totally blanking on their name. Of course they all feel bad if you don't remember them.  I am actually pretty good with faces, just not the names.  Interestingly, if I see the name of an old student on an old roll or something, I can often recall a lot about them. 

So we are getting back into the routine.  We have actually started an evening routine that is going pretty well.  The main focus is story time, which we try to start between 7:45 and 8:00, hopefully with jammies already on.  Story time lasts about a half hour followed by teeth brushing, potty, hugs, and tucking in.  It is still not happening as early as I would like, but both children are generally in their rooms by 9:00.  Hopefully as it gets darker earlier (can summer really be over already!) they will go to bed earlier.