First Day of School

So yesterday I survived the first day of school!  At the high school I'm teaching at there are 8 periods, and those periods are divided up into an A-day (Period 1-4) and a B-day (Period 5-8).  Periods are about 90 minutes long.

Period 1 yesterday was a little bit of a gong show.  My pacing was all off and I was left with about 25 minutes at the end of class and nothing planned!  Being the spontaneous, "go-with-the-flow" person I am (that's a lie), I decided I'd allow the kids to get a jump start on homework so I pulled out a laptop cart.  Well wouldn't you know it, none of the laptops were charged!  That did not deter me however, I offered the laptops that were in my closet.  Those were charged, but none of the students had their passwords or usernames, because it was after all the first period of the first day of school and they had not yet registered an account.  You know what was the best thing about all of this?  The laptop catastrophe really ate up a lot of time, so we were left with only a few minutes of class with absolutely nothing to do!  Lesson learned, have handouts on hand for when this stuff happens.

Thankfully, I get two first days to get the hang of things.  Today is my first B-day and I feel so much more experienced than yesterday.  I'm anticipating a lot of growth this year.... that's a nice way of saying that I have so not arrived and I have a ton to learn :)  Good thing I'm at a school, good place to learn stuff!