First 3 days

I feel like I made a lot of changes this year.  First, I changed my grading philosophy, as discussed in this blog post.  Then, I added flexible seating to my classroom, thanks to a funded project on donorschoose.org.  So now my classroom looks like this:
 
I've also decided that this is the year that I kick butt at classroom management.  Since coming to the high school and abandoning P.A.T., I've relied on my relationship with kids to do my managing for me.  Which works for most kids, but I was WORN OUT at the end of last year because of poor classroom management.  So I have Bryce's "How to Participate" on my wall, I'm wearing professional skirts and heels, and I'm taking no crap.  French only except during the first 5 minutes if I have announcements to make and the last 5 minutes when we wrap up the day.  Other than that, "Pas d'anglais dans la classe de français."

And it's going well so far!  I have a few kids that I had last year who are trying to take me back to the loose rules of last year, but I'm not going to let them!!

I also decided to change my classroom jobs a bit (which I'll blog about later) and implemented the secret password.  We practiced Friday in preparation for the real deal this week and the kids really got into it, whispering into my ear and acting like it was a big deal.  I loved it!

One last thing that went well last week: we had back to school night, where parents come to meet the teachers and find out about class.  In past years, I've introduced myself and talked about my philosophy and grading practices and blah blah blah blah.  But then I had to go to back to school night last year at my daughters' school and it was HORRIBLE!!  So boring being read to from the syllabus hour after hour after hour.  So I pretended like the parents were my French 1 class and taught them exactly as I had been teaching their kids.  The feedback was extraordinary!  They loved it, they were laughing and I doubt they will complain about my class in the future.  It was a really great way to start to build relationships with the parents.

Last thing and I'll go for now:  Jeremy Jordan (aka Senor Jordan) is now in my building.  While we don't see each other much during the day, having him here has been a huge blessing because I have someone that I can talk to and he immediately gets it when I say Circling with Balls or Special Person, etc.  Also, we've started Skyping with Andrea Schweitzer, roommate extraordinaire, once a week to check in and see how things are going.  If you're ever interested in joining us, please let me know!  We'd love to have special guests!