Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Welcome Back...?

The students have all come back. By “all,” I mean those that were registered and ready to go for classes. I’m missing quite a few students and I’ve been advised by other teachers in my transition to teaching program that it would be best not to start teaching material until next week. The theory behind that one is that the students will not be caught up and in their correct classes for some time.
However, the chaos of the first few days of classes is NOTHING compared to where I used to work, which will forever after this point be called “School of Apathy.” I have termed it that because the majority of the teachers and administration there were filled with such an overwhelming aura of apathy that I had to limit contact with them lest it infect me, too. The first few days of classes there resulted in such massive pandemonium that I’m frankly surprised that some students made it to class. My first two days of teaching were as a substitute there and I just stood in the hallways and directed the hoards of students that were wandering around the halls lost, confused, or having social hour. It was amazing.
Here, there are not that many students out in the hallways and those students that come late to class generally show up within the first 3 minutes of class starting. I don’t know if it’s the new method that I have to get them on task when they start but it’s amazing to me that the difference between two schools can be so vast. My old school, during the first days of class, had people just wandering around everywhere and taking advantage of the large proportion of bodies in the hallway to skip class. Nothing ever happened to them. At my new school, which I have termed “School of Legion” because of the amount of students there, the kids get thrown out of the hall by our Academic Dean - who thus far seems to be an excellent boss.

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