Well, the 7 hour time zone difference was easy for me to readjust to...starting back to work was not! :-) I came home this afternoon and took a 4 hour nap. I'd probably still be sleeping but Eleanor woke me up. She said she was worried I'd wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to go back to sleep. When I woke up, I wasn't feeling like that would be an issue, but she might have been correct. We went and got something to eat at Quizno's after that. I wasn't up to cooking at 8PM and I still felt dead tired, although I'm a little perkier now...unfortunately.
School went well, but I am so glad we start with a partial week. We switched class schedules this year and no longer rotate and have a class disappear from the rotation every day. I think each class period is slightly shorter, but I am seeing every class every day which is something I really wanted. I hated that everyone was always slightly off pace with one another and in order to get them together, I would often not cover quite as much in all classes trying to keep them together. Hopefully I'll get more done this way. We'll start the real curriculum work on Monday. Yesterday we worked a little on the US citizenship test (pilot version) for students to see how they would fare if they had to test in order to become a US citizen. Their homework was to read through the rules and procedures at my website last night and come in with questions, prepared for a quiz. I gave that quiz today and then went over the answers while they graded it, elaborating a little on items that I thought they would have questions about.
We'll start a unit on media bias on Monday and then move into regular curriculum from there. I need to sit down in a focused time and place and work on some real long-term lesson planning though so I can keep up with the requirements of all the IEP's I have this year which seem to require a little longer term planning from me with regard to notification of test dates, etc. That isn't how I normally function and often feel free to change things on the fly when I think of something that I want to do with the kids that goes with the flow--teachable moment and all that. This will definitely challenge my normal methods, keeping up with these mandates. I'm not sure how I'll feel about it...guess I'll see. Of course, I will still keep up with teachable moments and those flashes of genius. I think it is part of what makes me a good teacher so I'm not going to sacrifice it. I plan to take the laptop with me to dance class tomorrow and work while Eleanor has class. That is a 2 hour block that hopefully I can use to my advantage.
We missed dance class tonight because a storm came up that was pretty intense (60mph winds) and I didn't want to drive until it ended. I laid down for a 15 minute rest and ended up sleeping 4 hours, so no dance. Whoops. We were all tired though. She will probably perform better in class tomorrow than she would have tonight.
I need to pick up our American edition of HP7 which I reserved before my trip. It is slightly different from the UK version and I have all of the books in hardback, American version, so this will complete the set. Eleanor is taking French I this year too and so I feel a need to buy her a dictionary for class. She said the teacher was getting some, but I feel like she needs one at home too. I'll go to Books a Million tomorrow while we are out for dance class and take care of these items. I think Amelia has some books to return to the library too and I'll be passing the library tomorrow so I should return those. I also need to find my copy of our school's summer reading book and read it this weekend. The author is coming to speak at our school the week of August 20th and so I feel like I need to complete the homework like the kids to appreciate it. The book is "Riding the Bus with my Sister"...it's not something I would normally read, but I'll give it a whirl. I need to pay the bills this weekend too--yuck!
I think I'll take my Requip now and lay down and read for awhile before bed. It's 9:21 and I want to get to bed close to normal bedtime so I can maintain the consistent sleep schedule all week. It should help me readjust more quickly to the early wake up call! Good night.
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