Post Traumatic School Disorder

What a day! Day 7 brought lots of changes to our lil ole school (and teachers) that have survived a merger, dust storm, bulletin board destruction and most recently "classroom reassignment".  Due to the merger and the district changing boundaries, our enrollment was lower than projected, leaving other schools in our district bursting at the seams.

This resulted in "condensing" grades 1, 2 and 4 :( Basically one teacher from each grade was reassigned to teach another grade at another school in the district. Thank goodness there are jobs for them all, it's hard enough as it is! This means that the other classes will "absorb" the other students. A little difficult to do a week and a half into the school year, but I'm not complaining...I easily could have been a "reassigned" teacher and thank the elementary school gods that I'm not one of them. I will however, miss my new teammate :( and the other 2 teachers headed for new adventures.

The trials we have all been through during the past year have been frustrating and and trying on the nerves but despite all of the upheaval, we managed to become the 2nd highest achieving school in the district! Second only to the traditional academy I might add ;) This brings me to my conclusion, dear dear district...please close the doors (turn down the ac while you are at it) and leave us alone until May! I promise you will not be disappointed! 

I'll get off my soap box now, thanks for listening!

Any words of encouragement will be appreciated :)

TGI-Fresh Start

Luckily this week went by fairly quickly. Lots going on kept us all busy. At school we put together some very focused small groups to double and triple dip our kids before Dibels. I decided on a Hawaiian/Tiki theme for test day motivation and celebration, I'll post pics soon.

It's official that my school will be merging with Meyer and interviews are Monday! I'm polishing up for the big day. There will be 7 sections in the K-1 band and I'm really hoping to be hired for one of the spots. Also interviewing are my dear friends and teammates Ruth and Lauren, Hudson's Kinder team and the K-1 teachers from Meyer. It's quite stressful but the cards have been dealt and I have to continue to be the best teacher I can be. It has been an emotional 6 months of waiting, new and changing information and we are all ready to have something to hang our hat on.

I have wanted to put up some pics from our awesome Flat Stanley unit, hopefully later this weekend. Lesson plans for summer school were due today so that has kept me busy.

The final word on my school laptop came in and they "cannot retrieve the hard drive". Can't or aren't going to...you decide. Seemingly devastating that everything I've worked on, photos of my class, amazing units from fellow bloggers and things I don't even know I'm missing are gone but in the grand scheme of things, life will go on. Time to focus on the interview and a "fresh start".

No Sarti Parties this weekend, Dan is flying and I'm catching up on housework, sewing, groceries and errands. We're STILL waiting on our tax return, and Dan and his brothers bought a fishing boat, whatareyougonnado?

Our good friends Natalie and Joe are coming this week and are staying at our house. I love having company! I can't believe it has been almost a year since they tied the knot and we were at their wedding in upstate NY.

There is plenty to look forward to in May so here we go...cross your fingers for me Monday afternoon, here's to a fresh start!