First Week Fun

The first week of school is an interesting and wonderful and crazy time.

If you read Harry Wong (and if you don't, you should), his excellent book The First Days of School will tell you that the first few days are critical for establishing procedures and routines.  Teachers want to do this, but the first week almost never allows for it.

Our school starts on a Tuesday, so the first week is four days long.  This year, none of those four days followed the same schedule.  On the first day of school, we begin with a whole school assembly, so that alters the schedule a bit.  Our second day was Wednesday.  In my school this means the chapel schedule (or what I call "the flippy do").  This means that instead of going to third period, middle school students go to chapel while high school students go to 8th period; and instead of going to fourth period, high school students go to chapel while middle school students go to 9th period.  Then, when 8th and 9th happen, our students go to 3rd and 4th.  If that sounds confusing to you, it is because it is confusing.  We have been doing this for five years now, and I am still surprised when my third period class doesn't show up.  Thursday does follow a "normal" schedule, but since they haven't had that yet, it does seem normal.  Also, it is the day our high school students get their computers, which pulls them out of a class or two.  Friday, we have a homeroom schedule.  While this is only a few minutes difference in a few periods, it is a fourth schedule in four days.  It is also the day middle school students receive their computers, so I will have one of my 8th grade classes but not the other two.  Harry Wong, how do I go about establishing procedures this week?

Lest you think of the previous paragraph as a list of complaints, let me tell you that I love all of these things.  The first day assembly is awesome.  You get to hear all the happy sounds of students reconnecting, who are happy to see each other, and excited about a new year.  Chapel is awesome.  I can't wait to see the chapel news videos each week, and yesterday's promo was epic.  Getting the computers is so great I wish we did it earlier in the week.  We haven't done homeroom yet, but I am optimistic that it will be a good thing.  I'm not complaining about any of this, but it does make it difficult to establish procedures and routines.

I suppose that will come next week.