School starts Tuesday

And I should have gone to bed long ago. But I started revising the links page on my website. I had to change the phone number in the banner anyway, and then I got carried away. You know how it is. I had to add the SXSW winner of Orpheus and the Underworld. It is so cool, and so moving: http://2004.sxsw.com/sxsweb/winners/?PHPSESSID=3b18763ed1adbddec35910509e73c21c

Enjoy that link.

So, tomorrow I need to finalize lesson plans for Tuesday and get materials ready.

This evening I finished the poster for my door and inside the room that has the Temple of Castor and Pollox in the background and my schedule in the foreground.

Tomorrow I'll be laminating and finishing setting up the work wall, for lack of a better term. I mean, this should all go smoothly, right??

Yawn.

Now if the school year will just go smoothly after all of this work.

TOMORROW!

Ok... I am totally stressed from so many intensive days in a row and no real rest!

And I didn't wimp out! I didn't tell myself, "oh, you can just do like some of the other teachers, and let the kids sit where they want." Kiss of death for control of a middle school classroom. That let's them think THEY are in control and not YOU.

So, after getting my rosters at NOON, I managed to set up a seating chart (make sure you always do this with post-it notes so you can make changes easily), and then put large post-it notes on the desks in use, labeled with the people sitting there each period. Something like this:

1st period: John C.
2nd period: Mary D.
3rd period: Joe E.
etc

It's a Wong thing (_The First Days of School_) and it's well worth the effort. I'll also have index cards on their desks before class. Here's how tomorrow will look: I'll greet them at the door, check their schedules to make sure they're in the right place, and then tell them to look for their seat and begin work on the index card. That is, they won't have "free time" to goof off while I'm busy at the door. They need to get RIGHT TO WORK!

It's a day mainly for policies and administrivia; not a lot of Latin. I think I will talk in Latin as much as possible to the 8th graders to shake them up a bit. heh heh heh.

Don't ask me my plans for the rest of the week....

;)