The First Week of School

We survived our first week of school. I have never worked in a school setting before so I had no idea what to expect. Eric, on the other hand, has many years of experience and knew what was coming this past Monday as hundred's of school aged kids invaded campus.

For those of you who do not know, Eric is teaching World History to the 9th and 10th graders and I am the Online Coordinator. My classroom is a computer lab and my students are either taking online Advanced Placement courses or they are in study hall. My job is to get the online kids going in their classes and make sure they become self-directed and to keep the study hall kids quiet and focused on homework. Basically, I have become the peson I didn't like in High School: the one who always made sure everyone was working and "shhhushed" us whenever we talked. While the kids are working, I am doing projects for the office and working on the school website.

Monday started with a high school assembly and it was our first exposure to our new students. The assembly consisted of a short new teacher intro time (we just stood up and waved to the crowd) and then info on school policies that had changed over the summer or were going to be reinforced this year. Afterwards, it was off to homeroom time. Eric is a co-advisor to the Freshman class, and I am a co-advisor to the Sophomores, so we both had tasks to perform (handing out school supplies) and class meetings to facilitate during that time. At the end of homeroom, the real school day began. I have students in my room 2-6th periods and Eric has kids 1, 3, 5-7th. The class periods were shortened because of the assembly and we had just enough time to introduce ourselves, hand out books and syllabi, and go over classroom expectations before the bell rang. By the end of the first day, both Eric and I were exhausted.


This is my classroom. The wall on the left is glass and looks into a larger secondary computer lab. The refridgerator like thing in the back right hand corner of the room is our A/C / Heating unit. The school, like all buildings south of the Yangtze River, does not have centralized air or heat.


Over the course of the week we better aquainted ourselves with the kids and already we appreciate the diversity we seen in our classrooms. The student body at KIA comes from all over the world: 1/3 are North American passport holders, 1/3 are European passport holders, and the final 1/3 are Asian, mostly Korean passport holders. I gave my students a quick survey the first day asking general questions: what is your passport country? What languages do you speak? In what countries have you lived? What counties have you visited? etc. The answers were amazing! Some of the kids have lived in 5 different counties and fluently speak 3 languages. Keep in mind these students are 15-17 years old. When they got to "What counties have you visited?" some of them just laughed and asked if they really had to write down all of them. They have interesting stories to tell and I am eager to get to know them as the year progresses.