I am so excited! I finally know when I will get to start with my wonderful 4th graders! We were scheduled to begin on September 1st, but they have pushed our start date to September 6th so that they have time to install all of the computers, furniture, etc. According to our principal, we should be able to get into our classrooms to start setting up on August 29th. Now I feel like I can finally start planning a bit! We will have a week with our school faculty to start working on school improvement plans, getting to know each other, and planning before we can even get into the building since we head back to work on August 22. This year will definitely be stressful, but also very exciting!
Also, we are hoping to do 2-person teams this year if our principal will allow it. We are looking at one teacher taking care of Reading/LA and Social Studies, and the other teaching Math and Science/Health. If we do this, I will be doing the Math & Science. I am a little nervous about this, since I have always just naturally felt stronger teaching Reading/LA (probably because I started my teaching career as a 7th grade Language Arts teacher). I am looking forward to possibly being able to focus on a few subjects vs. all of the subjects. Does anyone out there "departmentalize", and if so, do you have any words of wisdom???
How exciting! It seems like you guys must be on pens-and-needles waiting for the school year to begin at your new, beautiful school. We don't "departmentalize" at my school, but I wish we could! Good luck with your school year-- I can't wait to hear more about how it goes!
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Thank you for the comment, Rebecca! We are definitely excited! I am glad that we will have a full week to get together as a faculty and start "creating" our school! We need to come up with a mascot, a school improvement plan, and basically everything a school needs to have in place! We should get to see the building next week, and hopefully our move-in date doesn't change!
ReplyDeleteI departmentalize, and it.is.wonderful. I can't imagine teaching fourth any other way (and I was self-contained for a year). I always thought I was a better LA teacher, but I teach the Math/Science/Social Studies half of the team, and it's really made me a better math teacher. You will love love love it!
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