First day of school!

      Today was my first day of teaching. Last night I went to bed at 9:30 after reading the last bit of Harry Wong's book First Days of School. All you you educators will know exactly which book I am talking about. My teacher outfit was picked out the night before and my purse and lunch were all packed. I got up this morning at 4:40 a.m. and it surprisingly felt normal since I got so much sleep. I had time to read the Word and pray over my classes, which was such a blessing this morning. We rode to school with Marc and Amy, with me on Kayla's lap. We're such classy first-year teachers. It was nice not to be sweaty and tired from the walk. I had a few minutes to set up my room and then headed out to the court between the elementary and the high school for devotions. Parents were already showing up as we talked and prayed. The guacharacas, these big noisy birds, were screeching loudly as Chris was praying...apparently they disapproved. I only got 15 minutes with each class this morning because of English testing. It was barely enough time to introduce myself, hand out a parent letter, and work through a math brain teaser. However, I enjoyed it and know I am going to love my classes this year. My Algebra 1 class has only 1 student.

      I also got to administer my first standardized test today. We spent most of the later part of the morning and afternoon doing this, with half hour breaks in-between tests. I got to chat with my students during the break and loved hearing English, Korean, and Spanish all being spoken at the same time. So many of my students are trilingual! The rest of the afternoon was an all high-school meeting to discuss the student handbook and to pick electives. On Wednesdays we have an after-school meeting so we made a final decision on electives.

     It was a great first day and a good start to the year! I absolutely love teaching, and especially teaching math. I can't wait to get started on some math content and see how much these kids know!

      Through what I can only describe as a supernatural peace from God, I continue to remain unstressed despite the number of things I still have to accomplish. Yesterday I was able to write out a scope and sequence for two of my classes and only have one left to do for this semester. Looking through what I will be teaching and coming up with a plan has made me feel so much more comfortable. This weekend will be spent doing some hard-core planning.

     This is how I currently feel about unit/lesson planning:

Short Stories and Prayer Requests:

1) The posters in my room keep falling down. When the previous teacher packed up his room, he rolled up the posters so they have a tendency to curl and then fall off the wall. I do not want to be spending every morning putting the posters back up on the wall. Anyone know of any creative ways to hang posters with little resources and despite the humidity?

2) Awesome praise! I officially have keys so I can now get in and out of the school when I need to. Such a blessing!

3) Prayer request: We thought we had our visa trip all planned out. Most of the teachers needing to take a visa trip were going to go. Apparently the tickets are no longer available so we're all back to square one trying to find out where to go. With school starting, finding time and having internet access is much more limited.

4) We had our first official housemate dinner. We have agreed to cook together once a week. This week was tacos with homemade tortillas. So good!!

5) This is what our refrigerator looks like after we have gone to the market. CRAZY!

Spanish word of the day: a la derecha which means 'to the right' (direction-wise)