Getting Ready

My grade-team - I am the sixth grade team leader - had a very productive meeting where we set goals for student orientation, brainstormed lesson ideas, and began putting together a schedule. I think I am starting to get a feel for the tone to set when running meetings... not too bossy yet still keeping things moving. At the end of the meeting, everyone was in good spirits and one teacher commented on how much we accomplished. Yay!

Then we met with a man from DreamYard, an arts program we are going to work with this year. We decided that the social studies teacher and art teacher here will work with a DreamYard teaching artist for two hours a week in each sixth grade class. The projects they do are designed by the teaching artist and our teachers in order to carefully integrate the standards and goals of the curriculum. It's really exciting - we are hoping to work with a theater/drama artist, perhaps even make puppets. In this day and age, it's nice to work in a school where we still prioritize the arts.

I sat down with our two brand new teachers and talked about some of our school routines and policies, and a few basics about planning units/lessons... they seemed to appreciate the opportunity to ask questions and get a sense of how we work.

And then I spent the afternoon cleaning and decorating my classroom, a project that will take another few hours. I'm going with orange bulletin boards this year - you wouldn't think it would be a good color, but it's a festive orange, and I need a change from my usual green and purple color scheme.