My First Day With The Super Writers

Hello all, sorry for the delay in getting a post in, been very busy.

Work has been pretty crazy this past week. As I said before, my responsibilities are getting more and more intense. I started teaching my own class last night, what a rush. The official title of the class is Superwriters 003.

It was pretty nerve-wracking last night. I have 13 kids...Eileen, Kenny, Tina, Eric, Terry, Jenny, Andrew, Browning, Edward, Matthew, Jennifer, Sean, and Amy. Most of them seem pretty sharp, particularly Amy, Browning & Jennifer. Eileen, Kenny, & Terry are going to struggle, which means I'm going to struggle with them.

I went into the class feeling insanely unprepared. I attribute this to the fact that there was no blueprint for this class. Up until last night, I have been able to ask Chris or Brent how to teach something when I was stumped because they've taught every lesson in our regular classes...it's all been done before. This writing thing is brand-spanking new, I was on my own...pretty darn intimidating.

After introductions, I let go with the whole this class is NOT going to be easy thing. I told them they were going to probably have to spend about 5 to 7 hours a week doing homework and that attendance is essential. If they miss a class, it will be virtually impossible for them to catch up. This class meets once a week for 16 weeks and we have to cram a TON of stuff into that time-frame. I am not looking forward to dealing with a kid who misses a class...it'll be a mess. Their homework for week one included about 30 pages of tough reading, 75 new vocabulary words from that reading, and 10 workbook pages. So, needless to say, they were a bit shell-shocked. I wouldn't be surprised if 1 or 2 of them don't return next week.

The stuff were going to be learning is really important, I hope I can make it fun and interesting for them. The text books are great, which should make it much easier and get the kids more involved...we'll see.

The apartment is great. Life is much simpler when you have a tranquil place to come home to. Ya can't beat the location and it's pretty quiet considering I'm smack in the middle of a crazy area of town.