I meet my kids tomorrow!

And... I can't say that I'm entirely ready. Ignore the fact that I'm not ready for summer to end (I'm trying to). Even with four days of work days, I just don't think that I could ever feel ready enough! My head is currently so jumbled, and you'll be able to tell by reading this post!

cute, right?

At my school, we have an open house where parents and students can come in and meet their team teachers. While there, we get their email addresses, give them their schedules, and get to know as many families before school starts. As a middle school teacher, I have a lot of students, and the few minutes that I get to talk to each family could never be enough, but it's a good way to start the year.

So I have my stations set up for open house. I have my powerpoint made to show them what we will be learning in math this year. I have my wish list posted on my door (yeaaaahhhh). But I still don't feel ready! Probably because I have no idea what lessons are going to look like this year...

I have met with the other math teachers in my grade about our game plan for this year. Since we've gotten tablets for this year, we have a lot of questions, like how much of what we normally do can we replace with the tablet? What are the limitations of the tablet? (Pretty hard to answer) What are all of the possibilities we have now? (That's even harder to answer)  I had been thinking about doing an interactive notebook, but then thought that there may be an option for using the tablet with that, but now I'm back to thinking I'll use the INB idea. We'll probably just do it on notebook paper so that students can fold in the notes that they take on the videos that we assign for homework.

All of the questions aside, everything is SO much easier the second time around. Last year was my first year teaching, and it helps so much to not have to do all of the setup that comes with walking into an empty classroom! I was able to focus more of my time on making what I have more effective, meetings, planning, meetings, organizing, and meetings! So that's good. I wasn't as nervous when I had to call all of the students in my homeroom (not that it was fun) and I'm not nearly as nervous the day before open house.  Hopefully it goes as well as I hope it does!

Good luck to everyone who is starting a new year of teaching! Remember: it's not about us, it's about them!