back to school, back to school....

!!!

the first two days have been great!

we haven't been doing a whole lot of hardcore things yet, just getting to know the students but it has been really great.  we have 24 5th graders, 14 boys and 10 girls (i think) and the boys are going to be bunches of fun. lots of energy (the girls, too) - but all of the best kind of energy - they'll be so fun.

ms lisa and miss liz have gotten off to a good start - we are working together awesomely, we have very similar personalities and so teaching together is going to be awesome throughout the year. i'm also pretty sure that all the kids love us already (how could they not).

as far as our class/the school goes:

1. most of our students are italian but even the ones who aren't (we have 4 non-italians) speak italian so they are all essentially english language learners.  now, i hadn't really thought about what this would mean, in terms of instruction, but it is awesome.  hearing them spit out italian to each other (which isn't allowed) just before answering a question in perfect english blows my mind.  and THEN the students who aren't italian ALSO speak another language at home, even MORE mindblowing!  i don't have a ton of experience working with ESL students so i'm super excited to get some experience this year in instructing them -- lisa and i also have a word wall set up for them to teach us some italian words (!) so that should be fun.

2. being in the same school as high schoolers is crazy. at the end of the day we'll see them outside just like making out and being all italian and high schoolers and they're bigger than me. today i had to walk in the high school hallway while they were changing classes and i did not love it -- i forgot for a minute that i was actually a teacher in their school.

3. our schedule is pretty good.  we have a break each day when they have italian class so that's a good chunk of planning time.  it also switches around every day so our planning time is at a different time each day, which i like. sometimes it's at the very beginning or end of the day which is great!

4. school lunch is awesome. they feed us every day which is great because a) don't have to pack a lunch! and b) it's italian food that is delicious and c) less grocery buying! i'm not quite sure we have any food in our apartment, actually....

more things unrelated to school:

it's cold here already. like blisteringly cold. like yesterday i wished that i had worn tights to school. and i wore a heavy sweater all day. :( and then today there was a monsoon. just as school got out. so that was fun.

oh, and all of my kids have facebook. they're 10.

tomorrow is back to school night! it should be interesting and very different than a back to school night in the states since we'll have translators all over the place and all of that -- most of our parents don't speak english. wish me luck!

xx