Where's the beach?: Bring em on!

Tomorrow is D-day. At this point, however, I don't even know what grades/subjects I will be teaching.

Tomorrow the 6th graders come all by themselves. I suppose this is a way to ease them into the brave new world of middle school life (lockers, swirlies, zits, girls, etc.). The problem is, we don't have schedules for them. We don't know what classes they should go to, and they certainly don't. As a 6th grade team we decided that we would just split them up and rotate them through all of the 6th grade teachers until we have schedules for them. That will probably be Monday.

Back to the point that I don't know what grade I'm teaching. This is because the registration numbers did not match predictions made in the spring. There are way more 6th and 7th graders than 8th graders, and the administration is needing to move teachers around quickly to accomodate the lopsided school population. There are several factors outside of the control of my school that have led to this situation.

1. Denver Public Schools uses open registration. This means that students can enroll in any school they want to, so predicting class sizes from year to year is more of an art than a science.

2. The Montbello community is very unstable. People come and go with alarming frequency. Here is an article from a few years ago that outlines what happened in the housing market .

3. Students are still registering. The students numbers are changing, significantly, on a daily basis.

So I am in limbo. It is pretty stressful not knowing what to expect for the rest of the year, but I have a plan for tomorrow. And tomorrow I will have a plan for Thursday. And then I will have a plan for Friday. Though this habit is not going to turn my students into incredible scientists, for now it will have to do.

I am excited and terrified. And it is just weird to think that I am about to be entrusted with 200+ 11 year olds. Up to 41 per class, 6 times a day. What am I getting into?

Side story:
Here is a picture of a TV that used to be in a bar, and for $25 bucks is now about to be in our living room! And they gave us a free meal at the place, so really it's free. I know you're jealous.