School Has Begun!

Yes, school has started! I can't believe this is my 10th year teaching! For those of you who don't know, I'm teaching 2nd grade this year after teaching 3rd/Reading Recovery for the past 4 years and before that I taught 1st grade for 4 years. Oh and Art for 1 year! Yep, the years just fly by.

I have been soooo busy getting ready this year. I moved classrooms and was not able to go in and organize until August 1st. I was amazed at all the things that were left behind for me. The teacher from 3 teachers ago in this room had taught for 30 something years and had left most of her files for the new incoming 1st year teacher. Well, she left after that year and left all the files for the next new incoming 1st year teacher. When she left......you guessed it, she left all the stuff (shiz), too! So I spent several days going through her old files and chucked most of it! It was quite liberating and got me into this major dejunking mode...so I felt total relief and not an ounce of guilt throwing some of my things "that I'll use next year" AWAY!! YEAH!! The funniest thing I found among all the artifacts left behind were book reports. These were written by 2nd graders back in 1971!! What the heck!!! My husband was born in 1971!!! Who keeps those things. I learned a great lesson those several days and hope to be much better in the "oh, I just NEED this" moments!

School is going good...I think I'm more tired this year! It's been hard getting used to having 2 classes and boy are they different. If I had to pick a favorite class, which I wouldn't, but if I did, it would be my afternoon class...the kids are a little more endearing, but there are some in my morning class that I would clump in with them if I could! They sure are cute though. Today one of my little boys in the afternoon class raised his hand during a little math test that I was giving them and he proceeds to tell me that someone "farted". (Why thank you very much, definitely needed to know that) So I said to him, "well, they should say excuse me right?" Of course, others heard me so then I had to say to the whole class, "Boys and girls...if you are 'Tooty Fruity' please say excuse me...we all have to do it sometimes, but we need to be polite and say excuse me." So of course they are trying not to giggle but then I get the giggles and so we all just had a good laugh for a minute. But they just thought calling it "tooty fruity", which I got from Val, was the funniest thing they had ever heard in all their 7-8 years!!! Pretty funny!

Well, I'm trying to be better about first remembering and thenwriting down the funny, cute things these kids say and do...so look forward to some hilarious posts the next 9 months!! Happy school year to all!