FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL | High School Teacher

I am not at all a novice to the first day of school but that doesn't mean that I have it figured out my favorite part about the first day of school is that I didn't take role it's a fun little form of cruelty both for us the teachers standing up and butchering kids names and for the poor kids whose names get butchered and the ones who have to listen and watch it all like watch the train wreck half like I couldn't really visualize how to make that work talking to every single kid on the first day of school like I have so many things to do like goal number one meet the kids goal number two do the things it really just altered how I've approached this whole entire week hello my friends and welcome back to the caffeinated classroom this is your first time here my name is Marie I'm a high school English teacher in San Diego California this was my first week of school well it wasn't really like a week week because we started school on Wednesday and today is Friday do you like my my football jersey we do this really cool tradition at school where every Friday that we have a home football game our varsity players go and find a teacher who they would like to ask to wear their practice jersey while they wear their game jersey to school I'm it's a really cool way to like show school spirit it just like gets you in the like Friday cool mood anyways um so I thought hey I'll just vlog in my Jersey today I wanted to go through for you guys what this week kind of held what it looked like what went well what didn't and kind of like my big takeaways from the first week of school so recap this is my 13th year teaching I am not at all a novice to the first day of school but that doesn't mean that I have it figured out I will say that this year is the very first first day of school that I went home and I didn't feel like I had been hit by a semi-truck I was definitely tired but I wasn't that like bone tired just exhausted heap on the couch that I normally am so let's start with day one um day one of school I did stations with my students and I identity shion's last year and the stations that I did last year were awesome it was a really cool way to start the school year but the stations that I set up last year if you missed that vlog I will link it below or in the I cards they were great but they were kind of high maintenance in that a couple of the stations I did last year like one was an escape room that I had that was awesome it was all on the writing process but I had to like reset it every time not just every period but every time a group would go like through that rotation I had to reset it so I had to reset it like six times a period which isn't that bad if you already know all your kids but if you don't know all of your students yeah because it's the first day of school it kind of makes for like a really you know like high maintenance day and I just remember being really tired there were a couple of other stations like that last year my gosh sorry what are we doing my camera there are a couple of your stations like that last year that I just remember like making me feel really frazzled on the first day of school which is not really where you want to be so this year I did things quite differently rather than having like six different stations for kids to go to on the first day I had four and then that gave us a little bit of wiggle room for some of the stations to take longer for me to have conversations with kids I'll show you what those stations are in just a second but I want to tell you my favorite part about the first day of school is that I didn't take role I didn't actually haven't taken role I have not stood up in front of my class and called names what so rather than taking role while students were going through their stations I went to each and every table and I sat down I made eye contact with every single student which I thought was gonna take forever remember I have quite large class sizes um and I didn't it took it was great I could I got to individually meet every kiddo I said hi can you please tell me your name they told me their name I found them on my little roster I gave him a checkmark if they told me that they went by a different name I wrote it next to it so that I had that one-on-one connection I said I'm mrs. Mars so nice to meet you I'm really glad you're here it really has set the tone in a lot of ways just that one-on-one and bonus I didn't have to stand up in front of the class and feel nervous about butchering kids names because I feel like that's its own its own fun little form of cruelty both for us the teachers standing up and butchering kids names and for the poor kids whose names get butchered and the ones who have to listen and watch it all like watch the train wreck happen right it's just like its own special form of torture I've heard other teachers especially on social media and even just like my colleagues talk about doing something like that on the first day instead of standing up and taking role like just talking to kids one-on-one and I just was like there's no way that's ever gonna be time for all of that like I couldn't really visualize how to make that work talking to every single kid on the first day of school like I have so many things to do and then my priority was instead of do the things it was meet the kids and like if you one thing I'd like shifted my mindset to like goal number one meet the kids goal number two do the things it really just altered how I've approached this whole entire week and it's been like a great it's just been a good shift in energy and a shift in like priorities that I think have like I said really set the tone in this room I'm gonna show you what it looks like around the room right now basically here I'll just show you right over here like behind me you can see right here on this table every single table has just stacks of books and I had my son help me put these stacks out there just from my personal like classroom library the night before school started when I was like setting up the room we just put stacks all around the room here I'll show you some more yep they're just around I mean don't mind a little bit of a mess and those little stacks of books around ensured that from day one students we're gonna have books in their hands some of our students are so used to fake reading and trying to avoid holding books and reading books and it's it's put such a bad taste in their mouth from being forced to read things they didn't want to read that I'm trying to kind of like break that stigma and help them change their mindset around reading and like here we are books so whenever at the end of these first day stations they were done early I said take a look at a book you don't even have to open it just fan yourself with it like just to kind of like I don't know like lighten the mood a little bit surrounding books so I'm gonna show you these stations I actually did on day one obviously they're not set up anymore so this is the end of day three but I want to show you what those stations were station one was the investigate your teacher activity from Abby right on with Miss G and it's really really cool it makes students use their skills of inference to kind of figure you out it was kind of funny though because so many of my students were my freshmen last year and there already did this with me or like have forgotten that they did this with me but already know me and are now my sophomores and so to find them talking about in their reflection like things that they'd ever thought about before when they were freshmen but are now noticing about me and about the room it was just kind of a funny thing but so station was investigate the teacher station to was a lot of the set up and like businessí stuff google classroom i had them like log in join their class code which is under here um and then take a little reading inventory that i did a google form for just to kind of like and i'll show you guys actually some of the results because it's a very interesting survey cuz then we talked about it and early peruse a book station 3 i had them do a student english profile and this is from another friend this is from ashley bible building book love she sent out as a freebie at these ela profile student profiles so it was really cool they all filled one out and i'm actually gonna put them up on the wall probably next week and then station 4 was email etiquette and this idea I got from Jenna copper dot-com teaching and I actually used some of her slides that she sells in her little like lesson on email etiquette and at the end students had to send me an address after they like led themselves through a little slideshow so it was cool so good simple kind of needed to be done but not like super difficult activities and tasks that were good for the first day that allowed me also to be able to interrupt them to like say hi and introduce myself and just talk a little bit and they could get back on task when we were done loved it loved it so like I said before my biggest takeaway from week one was setting my own art was changing my own mindset to prioritizing meeting students and making it about them and not about what I needed to get done and that really set the tone and the other biggest takeaway that I am grateful for was like just listen to what they want to do kiddos asked me can we read heck yeah you can read I'm gonna change the plans because I would so much rather that you get into this book that you've just chosen than I say I'm sorry I know I just told you to check out and I told you that like me that is really really important but I need you to put that away cuz I need you to go and like fill out this form like no or like me to talk about the syllabus no just read the book and like that stuff will come later um yeah so I will say I have a lot of work to do I am barely keeping afloat right now just because it's the beginning of the year and I'm a mom of two little kids and this is just how life is I'm not stressing about it really I mean yeah I feel the pressure but I'm not like freaked out stressed about it it just is what it is yeah I have a lot of work to do this weekend and some of it will get done and some of it won't and you know what it's gonna be okay because there's always the fact that this is a reading and writing class so sometimes we can just read I know that was kind of like a rambling talking at you kind of a vlog and I got to show you around the classroom just a little bit I will do an official classroom tour in the next couple of weeks but I just wanted to do like a quick little here's how the first week went I'm excited for the second week I'm excited to really show you guys some of the curriculum that I'm creating and the like resources that I'm trying to put up on Teachers Pay Teachers as fast as I can so that you guys can use it too but with that I have a football game but you get to I need to go pick up my kids bring them back for a little kickoff tailgate in our student parking lot it's gonna be super fun pizza and music and then everybody's gonna go into the game and it's gonna be such a good time so if you've not already subscribed take a second to do so like this video comment down below if you are as pumped as I am about the first days and weeks of school because I'm pretty excited and I will see you guys next time thank you for stopping by [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Caffeinated Classroom

Views: 23,133

Rating: 4.9841895 out of 5

Keywords: teacher, teaching, public school, education, educator, teacher blog, teacher vlog, high school, high school teacher, too cool for middle school, early edventures, english, english class, english teacher, drama teacher, theatre teacher, ted-ed, that lettered classroom, ela classroom, secondary ela, traveling teacher, ela, ela teacher, new teacher, teacher mom, mom vlog, iteachtoo, teacher dad

Id: vlty-B7gesU

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 25 2019