It finally happened! The curriculum for the entire school was trapped at the border, held up by customs for two weeks. It wasn’t released until Friday, which meant that Saturday morning was spent unloading the boxes and sorting through the books. Ridiculous! This was R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S.
One box would have a 1st grade writing tablet, a high school English text, a few 4th grade readers, and maybe some 8th grade science books – all saran wrapped in a bundle and thrown in a box. I mean, seriously folks! Who packed this? We had to open every box and sort out each text, student guide, teacher’s copy, quiz … every publication that goes into running a school. They had to be stacked by grade, inventoried, and then put on trucks and moved to the building that those classes were in to be sorted again to the individual classrooms to be sorted again by the teacher. In the end, I was only short four books and those are on order now. I figure in a year or so they’ll be shipped and make it through customs and trucked to Blue Creek…
Monday night was the Open House for the parents to come and see my classroom and listen to my spiel about the coming school year. It was very positive. The parents were responsive, and a few of the school board members came to my room to listen to my presentation. Afterward, I was told that they were very pleased. They were monitoring the reaction of the parents and determined that the parents were glad to see somebody who knows something about education in charge of Junior High. That’s me! Cool, huh?
I did have one parent try to convince me that reading was bad, though. It seems – and I was unaware of this – that reading ruins your eyes. Ruins ‘em! Might as well dig ‘em out rather than read! She has a daughter who loves to read, and she has to stop her from doing it all the time because it’s bad for you. BAD FOR YOU! Uh … ma’am … I’m an English teacher at heart. Your daughter is going to be blind by the end of the year….
I also let the parents know that at the beginning of the year, especially in the first couple weeks or so, I am very heavy-handed with my classroom. I made it clear that if their kids come home crying, or whining that their class is hard and that Mr. Lemanski is too mean and demanding, not to worry. It’s all planned! They laughed and appreciated my approach. I eventually lighten up once I set the tone and expectations for the year. They loved that! The administrators did as well, since they seem to have had a problem in the past with classroom discipline in the Junior High. Not this year, baby!
Anyway, two more days until school and I still have a lot of prep work to do. One thing that I was turned off by at first in the A Beka curriculum is that all the lesson plans are pre-written for you. I like to write my own. I was told however I can still do so since I have teaching experience and I’ll be using thir texts – except for Belizean history where I’ll be doing all the work. However, as the first day approaches, prewritten lesson plans are looking more and more attractive to minimize the work ahead of me. I’ll probably use them as I get settled in, then add my own spice later on. Pray for me! We've got a big year ahead of us!
Can’t wait!
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