First day of school

Yesterday the new kids came to the school including all the 6^th graders because they are new to the middle school.  I got to meet only my advisory kids for that.  All the kids have to buy a tablet PC to use at school so they went to a workshop about it and got their eggs.  They all have to carry around a blown out egg for a week or so.  If the egg gets cracked or broken they have to fill out “insurance” forms etc.  It gets them ready to carry a laptop with them all the time.  Most of them wrapped their egg in tp or something in the container.  One container flipped off a desk today and you should have seen the horror on the faces of all the kids!!!  The egg survived though J

Today all the middle schoolers met in the gym and we did our middle school cheer and a bowing ceremony which was pretty cool.  Then we had advisory and handed out schedules and handbooks etc.  We also gave them a lock.  Oh. My. 6^th graders are the same everywhere in the world when it comes to combination locks.  We practiced A LOT.  I think most got it down by the end.  I got to see Block A and B today.  They seem pretty sweet.  On kid is really uptight and freaking out about everything and another one was really trying to pull attention to himself (in People to People today he said “I like people who are criminally insane” etc.  when everyone else was saying things like “I like people who wear black shoes” )  other than that pretty good.  I have a kid named Francois who doesn’t speak a lick of English.  I have a kid from Belgium in there who speaks French so he translates but it was rough for all of us to wait for it.  It was really hard to play people to people because the kids wanted to run before Owen had put it in French – and it is hard for a 6^th grader to translate “criminally insane”!  I have a kid named Harshit. And yes you say it exactly like that!  Sounds like Horse shit!!!!  Ha!!  His mom kept saying it yesterday and it was so weird.  In the states when kids have names like that they change it to Joe or something J  The kids are from all over the place.  It is so cool – I am going to learn a lot.

They were cracking me up!  They don’t have their computers yet so they couldn’t do their assignment electronically.  It took me a good 7 to 8 minutes to get them to understand NO you do not do your work in the book.  You need to do that on a piece of paper.  I was asked “where do we get the paper?  What kind of paper?”  Just get any paper at your flat and do your work!!  They really didn’t quite get the paper thing J

Some of them have lived here for several years so I was teasing them and said I could use some pointers on crossing the street.  One kid said “wait for a traffic jam and run between the cars”  one said “just run fast while they are moving”  very funny.

Tomorrow I get to meet the rest of the 6^th graders and my 8^th graders.  I am going to try my hand at dyknow tomorrow and test my tech skills.  I am sooo fortunate to get to work at this school with all the tools that are available.  My principal and AP are awesome!!!  The 6^th grade team is great!  Most of the Middle school teachers are fun and nice.  I am so thankful that my math teaching partner is so awesome.  It is just the two of us and it could have made for a miserable year if one of us was lazy, rude etc.  We work well together – he is really patient at teaching me tech stuff and  I pitch in by making paper things and giving ideas on how we could teach things.  I am trying really hard to contribute what I can so it isn’t one sided.  But once I get the hang of things I can contribute more!!

The school is very different.  It starts at 8 and all these kids were in the halls at 7:20 and I was thinking like Kahla “go away!  Go sit in the cafeteria”  but here the school is their “home” and they are allowed to do a lot of things they aren’t allowed to do at other schools.  They get 10-15 min breaks between classes and can eat and are encouraged to sit on the seats in the halls and hang out.  It’s actually pretty good because they have time to use the bathroom, they get to socialize and snack so they aren’t starving! 

We just have tomorrow then Monday we are off for independence day!  J