Today I cried...

...but not for the reasons you think. I actually had an amazing day. The kids are amazing -- while they're definitely not angels and there are definitely going to be challenges -- I know that we will reach our goals. I think a big part of the reason that we could easily manage our class today was because it was the first day of school and the students were pretty timid. I expect that to change very soon...probably tomorrow.

But for now...I will bask in the greatness that was today. Things did go wrong: when we got to our classroom this morning we found out that they had ripped out the floors and removed all the furniture over the weekend to get rid of some asbestos contamination. This shifted us to the fifth floor of the school which aside from being up too many flights of stairs for someone with a sprained ankle and heels, was also not air-conditioned. After moving all our stuff and setting up our room (again) we realized we had two minutes to prepare and relax before we had to pick up our students.

The school processing was extremely inefficient and we did not have (nor do we have yet) a roster of the students in our class. It took a long long time to get everyone to their classrooms...and by the time we got there we had already completely missed an entire period that was supposed to be devoted to rules and procedures.

There are also two students who do not understand a word of English and could therefore, not write a single word either. This will be a huge challenge as they will be required to take and pass a state test that will only be administered in English...eep. We also have six or seven other kids who rely heavily on Spanish translations but can get by with just English. And then of course we have those who don't know any Spanish at all -- who knows why they are in a bilingual classroom.

We have a couple "behaviorally-challenged" students in our class (or so the school reports) which will make this summer more interesting. Luckily, I mastered my teacher face (read: the I-am-not-amused-at-your-attention-getting-antics) and so far it's working well enough. I did realize that I need to learn how to snap my fingers loudly. I feel like the "snap-and-point" is the ultimate teacher move.

Anyway, I did cry today. But it was when I got back to the University and I saw that all the staff had put together a big party for us to celebrate our official first day as teachers. [sniffle]. We made it.