School Schedule

So today was my first time with the students.  It was exhausting because I have 26 periods a week.  This means that, out of the 7 possible periods a day, I am teaching for 6 of them 3 days a week.  Here's a copy of my timetable so you can see what I'm talking about:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
1 7:50-8:35		11.c (1)	12.c (2)		12.d (1)
2 8:45-9:30	9.d (1)	13.d (1)	12.d (2)	11.d (1)	9.kny (1)
3 9:40-10:25		9.kny (2)	12.c (1)	9.kny (1)	9.kny (2)
4 10:40-11:25	11.c (2)		9.kny (2)	9.d (2)	11.d (2)
5 11:35-12:20		11.d (1)	9.kny (1)		13.d (2)
6 12:30-1:15	9.kny (2)	11.d (2)	12.d (1)	9.d (1)	12.d (2)
7 1:25-2:10	9.d (2)	9.kny (1)

I have 7 total classes, but each class is split into 2 smaller groups for language lessons.  This makes the classes smaller allowing for more linguistic interaction.  Makes sense.  However, this essentially means that I have 14 different classes each week.  In this school, there are basically two tracks students can take: Bilingual track or Normal track.  The bilingual classes are designated with D after the number, so 9.d would be a 9th grade class in the bilingual program. The bilingual program gets extra English lessons every week, and students attend two years of 9th grade--the first year is dedicated to improving English almost exclusively, and the second year they start taking more subjects in English and have more English lessons than the "normal" track.  (There is no grade 10, in case you're wondering...why?  Not sure yet, hahaha).  They go straight from year 9 to year 11.

The Normal, non-bilingual track is designated with a C after the number, so 11.c would be 11th grade without the extra English lessons that the bilingual track gets.  These students are not expected to achieve as highly in English as the bilingual students, but they still are high, I've noticed.

You can see from my timetable that the bulk of my lessons fall into the bilingual track with 9.kny, 9.d, 11.d, 12.d, and 13.d.  These kids are sharp--I'm gonna need to be on top of my game to keep them interested and challenged.  I had a really good time with them today though, so I hope I can maintain this for the rest of the year.  A teacher I had at CWU told  me a very important thing about group dynamics.  All groups go through basically 4 stages of development, and teachers need to keep these in mind as time passes in the beginning of the year:

1. Forming: Students are learning about themselves and the expectations of the teacher.
2. Storming: Students rebel against the teacher and are faced with boundaries (or aren't).
3. Norming: Students begin to perform automatically according to the rules.
4. Performing: Students know what to do and do it every time.

My students all know each other because their classes don't change each year (except 9.kny, which is a new class of newcomers to the school each year) so the "forming" stage will basically be them learning what I expect.  The "Storming" phase always makes me nervous.   I'm hoping to avoid a lot of trouble in the storming phase by being extra strict.  We'll see how it goes down.  Their last teacher was dearly loved by the students because he was funny and told jokes, and the teachers all said that the students loved him.  However, the teachers also said that he had a hard time getting the students to take classes seriously, so I'm hoping to avoid that.  It was an easy first day in terms of behavior, but they are still just "forming" now, learning what I expect.  I'm gonna drill it into them so they have no excuses to behave poorly.  We'll see if it works or not with them. 

I think I will conclude this message with some pictures of the town that I took from the front doors of the school.

Looking directly straight out from the front door of the school.

Looking to the right out the front door of the school.

Looking to the left out the front door of the school.