Back to Work

The joy and happiness of summer vacation are now distant memories and future longings. Things are settling in quite nicely though. I am trying to apply a principle that my college professor ingrained in his young ambiguous students. That principle is KISS- keep it simple silly (think he used stupid for silly). My life over the last few years has gotten quite busy or I have tried to keep up my busyness from my younger days. I was completely spent by the time last school year finished and I don't want that to happen again. God is teaching me to say no to things that come up, to keep 3 week nights a week to myself, to take more time to "smell the roses" and to enjoy relaxing with things I enjoy.
There have been many changes at work but I think the changes are for the better. I like my new principal and vice principal and love the returning VP. There seems to be a seriousness about students misbehavior. Yesterday, I walked a defiant student to a vice principal and that student received in house suspension for the day today. Very nice. It is important that teachers have the administration support for expected behavior and appropriate consequences for behavior that does not match up to that.
Enrollment is down this year by 130 students and that cut one full PE position. Even though the enrollment is down our PE classes are huge. My largest class is 49 and had 3 new added students in the last 2 days. One of my co-workers has 54 in one class. We are still trying to figure how to manage such big classes. All the more with big classes we need administration support. To say it from a women's athletic perspective- we need good support, just like a good sports bra- good and supportive (but not like Brandi Chastain from the US Women's World Cup Championship, showing it off to the whole wide world).
With classes starting to inch up in the 50's, I am reminded of my LA teaching days. It was very typical for my PE classes to all have 50, 60 and even 70 students in one class. Talk about crazy. But honestly those were some of my best days of teaching. Most of the population of the school were non-Americans, many immigrants who were attending their first school in America. These students wanted to learn, yet their test scores stunk. I have a few students this year who speak little or no English. Yesterday, I translated almost our who PE pamphlet to these students using the 3rd grade level Spanish that I have. These students are eager and they were sucking up the opportunity to learn. God refreshed the weary teacher in my just by working with these "chicos".
God is faithful and I know He will give me the grace to survive this year. I am looking forward to a good year.