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Thursday, August 21, 2014

Back to school, back to school….

It's impossible for me to begin the year without having the back to school song from "Billy Madison" go through my head at least 50 times. It is just a fact of life in my world. I've found that going back to school is significantly more difficult after spending the entire summer with my daughter. The summer days of walks, parks, lots of books, and zoo trips were fun and exciting. I consider it a true gift that I'm able to spend so much time with her during the summer. 
Awwwwwwww…..right?
Today is the second day of school, but the first time I'll have students in my room. The first day of school we always have full grade level groups watch the playground rules video and our principal goes over a few news items and reminders. It gets a little boring, so I'm excited to get started with students today.

I'm excited to try a few new things this year. I'm currently most excited about starting an art club this year. The music teacher at Thomas started a running club a couple years ago that has sessions in the fall and spring. I'm planning to have art club fill the gap during the winter in order to give students additional and advanced art opportunities. I've got some really cool ideas for art club!

Another big change this year is that Thomas Elementary is an official "Leader in Me" school. Leader in Me is a program developed around the "7 habits of highly effective people." I'm hoping it is effective and helps develop leadership and responsibility in our students. Does anyone else work at a Leader in Me school?



3 comments:

Jmatott said...

Sounds like our first day back except the special area teachers meet with each grade level (all three sections together... YIKES!)in the gym. We talk about whatever we want to get kids excited about the year... this year we are going to start off by beginning our Pinwheels for Peace. I don't want to sit around talking about procedures or rules or projects we are going to do later. I want to get them creating! We usually only have them for 30 mins. so that's enough to start drawing/ coloring our pinwheels. I'd like to hear more about the Leaders in Us program.

Natural Woman said...

Our principal told us that this year we would be doing the leader in me program. It hasn't been presented to the students yet, and the staff haven't been told about it yet either, so I'm not sure how it will go. She had me create a big tree in the entrance of the building so I guess it will be introduced at some point.

Zach Stoller said...

LIM is a pretty big commitment all around. We're so close to the beginning of the year that I can't tell whether it's actually helping or not. We have a fantastic new assistant principal, so I'm wondering if she's making the impact or LIM is.