Big Day

Well, tomorrow is the first day of school. I am really looking forward to it, seeing old students, meeting my new ones, etc.. The past 2 weeks have been a bit crazy trying to get school stuff sorted out, and helping the new teachers get their heads around things, but I think it will all come together tomorrow. We still don't really have a schedule yet, which is always interesting.

I'm teaching Gr. 9 and 10 again this year, along with Gr. 11. I have 5 more classes each week, compared to last year, but I will be able to reuse a lot of stuff from last year, so I think it will be okay. Last year I totally started from scratch, with nothing but a textbook, but I feel a lot more prepared going into this year. We'll see how it goes!

The Gr. 9 class has a bit of a bad reputation, so I'm feeling a bit apprehensive about teaching them. My theory is normally to start strict at the beginning, so we may be in for a few battles. You can pray about that one!

The school has instituted lotsof new policies this year, so we'll see how they get put into place this week. A lot of them stem from Mom and Lynne's introduction of "Respect Agreements" at the school-wide staff orientation. We now have a lot clearer guidelines for behaviour and consequences. We even have a lunch-time detention room! I'm sure the students are going to love that! Oh well, I think that we are really headed in the right direction, as it seemed last year that the students ran the school, and weren't always held accountable for their actions. I appreciate your prayers as we start this new year.