The School Year has started!

Welcome to Clark Middle School

 

Thursday marked our first official day at Clark Middle School. Leif and I have been attending various trainings and spending time in our classrooms before the first official day, but having everyone present in the building sure made things more real.   I'm excited about the up-coming year and feel like it's going to be a year full of professional growth.

This is the commons area as you walk into our school - IT'S HUGE!! I think this area alone is the close to the size of half of the high school in Cordova.  The basic layout of the school is the gym and music classes are what you see in the picture.  I'm standing at the top of the staircase.

Each grade level (6th, 7th and 8th) is per floor and set up in a long hallway with team pods. To the right of the trash can is a pod - which has a science, social studies, language arts and math teachers.  There are 3 pods per grade level.  Did I say this school is HUGE?!? 

My classroom is about 1/4th of the way down the 8th grade hallway. It's smaller than my former classroom, but I'm also only teaching students who need special education services for math. 

The view from my classroom window is pretty amazing.

 I'm thankful to be able to see the mountains.

I'm also thankful for this beautiful evening sky.  I love how even though I'm in a new part of Alaska, the sky and sunsets are still amazing.  This past week our dear friend from Cordova, Shannon, was able to take some vacation and came to stay with us.  We had work/training during the day, but it worked out that Shannon was able to do the things she needed to do.  We then spent the evening hanging out with kiddos and taking walks with the dogs.  It was great to have her visit and we miss her very much already!

Finally, while Leif and I have been busy getting ready for the new school year, I think the kids have grown two more feet each!  We went through 4 gallons of milk this past week and Shannon doesn't drink milk!  YIKES!!  Kids are definitely in a growth spurt right now and it's so much fun to see the things they are learning to do.  It's also exhausting because some of their new things are not behaviors that we would like to continue.  Leinna is doing better with new day care. We decided to call it school and she is allowed to wear her backpack each day.  We needed to do something to make it seem a little different than our wonderful provider from Cordova.  Wearing the backpack and our new provider started doing "projects" with her to take home - these things seemed to help ease the morning cries about not wanting to go.   Lukkas is busy cutting more teeth - you can definitely see the 3 molars coming in now and it looks like another bottom tooth is pushing its way up. 

Well, another week has passed and next week the students will be in the building Wednesday morning.  I'm excited and nervous  - really looking forward to taking some professional growth ideas that I haven't been willing to try before because, well, it's all just excuses on why I haven't done it before.  The point is, I feel like I have a clean start and either I'm going to fall in love with teaching again, or I'm going to learn that this is not for me.  

One last thought- have you ever been in a place where you felt like you were suppose to be there for a very specific reason.  That's how I feel every time I walk into Clark. I'm not sure what the reason is yet, but I'm going to keep my eyes, mind and heart open to "whatever" the reason is for why I'm in this position this year.