Tennessee DEN

I have two brand new baby teachers in working with me this year.  They are terrific, and I strongly believe they will make great teachers in a few years. During a planning period, one of them shared Sharon Creech with me.  Sharon is the author of about 15 books aimed at upper elementary and middle school kids.  Her website is fantastic and includes study guides for a couple of her books.  If you are a language arts teacher, you may want to visit this site soon.

Yes, the pitter patter of little feet have once again filled the hallways and sidewalks of our campus.  Okay, I teach middle school.  There is no pitter patter of anything, so let’s try this again.

The slapping sounds of flip flops, the loud incessant chatter of early teens, and the weird vestages of leftover hair color have now invaded the sanctuary we call school.  Was that better?

This is our first full day with students.  In our labs, we have mostly 6th graders so we are seeing wide-eyed kids scared to death and lost as a goose.  We are assigning computers and playing games to learn everyone’s names.  So far I have Krispy Kreme Chris, Excellent Elijah, Magnificent Matthew, Exciting Evan, Talktative Tyler, and Karate Kristen to name a few.  We begin our days with a Name Game that assigns every kids an adjective that begins with the same letter or sound of their first name.  For the next nine months, I will be known as either Mr. Childers, Mr. C., or Terrific Tim.  I love it!

As usual, our labs were not quite prepared for the opening day of school.  We remodeled one room and the electrical is not done.  The air conditioning didn’t come on early enough and it will be over 100 degrees today with the heat index.  We’re having so much fun!

Seriously, as much as we complain and can’t wait for summer to get here, we also complain and can’t wait for school to get started again.  I look forward to hearing how your opening days are going.