First Week of School

In August of 2007 when I began my first blog on Word Press, I wrote the blog post below. I enjoy looking at it and thinking about all of the external forces at work at the beginning of the school. It has been 2 years since that interesting week. The first week of school in 2008 was equally interesting when the street widening project closed both of our entrances into the school parking lot. We had to walk our students from Portage Middle School to Lindley since the buses could not get into the parking lot and parents had a difficult time coming to kindergarten orientation when the police officers closed the street in front of the school.

2007-The first week of school has come to a close and it was an interesting week. Being a special area teacher can be even more interesting than you might think. The first week of school is like the replay of a day over and over again. You must explain the rules and expectations to every class and most art teachers meet with 20 to 30 different classes.

I am very blessed with 60 minute classes. It is like a precious gift to be able to spend the entire 60 minutes with one class. We actually have a reasonable amount of time to complete projects. This week was a good time to share expectations, rules, and begin a project.

The weather made our week even more interesting than normal. Monday it was raining, a continuation of the previous day's down-pour, so hard in the morning that the children and staff got to school in sopping wet clothing. One of the major streets to my school was closed because of flooding. It continued to rain throughout the day. We had indoor recess at lunch time. At dismissal time there were no buses on time. All of students who ride the buses had to come to the gym to wait on their late buses. We have a few new teachers who help with dismissal and they got to be introduced to the process with less than favorable conditions. Most of us like to ease into a job. Not Monday. It was a bit challenging to say the least. With the street closed, the buses who normally come from that direction had to re-route around the school. Tuesday was a little more normal. A few buses where able to arrive more timely.

Wednesday was stiflingly hot in our building. It is a two-story brick building; it heats up and stays that way. The outside temperature was in the mid-90s with high humidity. I was surprised to hear that some of the schools in Indianapolis dismissed early because of the heat.

By Thursday, someone above decided it was time for a new test. About 2:30 pm in the afternoon our power went out. No, there wasn't a storm, thank goodness. We could have been dismissing in pouring rain without electricity. I never found out what caused the power outage but, it was not just our school. Several other buildings were without electricity too. We continued conduct school in the 90 degree + heat and humidity in the dark for another 40 minutes. Oh, did I mention that we do NOT have air-conditioning? For some reason, the community is not concerned that it is so hot in our buildings. We have fans but, of course, they did not work at this point. The PA system uses electricity too. We dismissed our 430 students in the dark without the PA system. Thank goodness that we have a few battery operated radios for communication. It was most interesting too. After most of our students had left, the power was restored. We still had some students waiting in the gym for their buses when the lights came back on.

Thursday was the beginning of the National College Soccer Tournament down the street our school. The traffic just wrapped itself around our building. We are located on the corner of the block. The intersection was pretty well grid locked at dismissal time by the parents who pick up their car riders, the soccer traffic, and the buses.

I am looking forward to next week. I think it may be a little more normal, if I remember what normal should be.