WOW...

What a whirlwind! So last week was the first week of school and it went well rough almost horrible as I talked about in my previous post.  Luckily I was hired with 3 other first year teachers that I went to USF with :) and we could all talk about our overwhelmed ,what am I doing, life is crazy feelings of being a first year teacher trying to find the balance of everything. When I say it went horrible, to an observer they probably would think it was fine, but the standards and expectations that I had for myself, I felt like I fell  quite short. As I started the second week of school I was a third grade teacher, but as I ended the week I am now a first grade teacher!
There are two new charter schools that opened in our school district this year and that resulted in dramatically lower numbers of students in all the schools in our county. After the five day count, my Principal was notified that he would be loosing one instructional unit in a grade 3-5 position because our student numbers were simply not there.  At my school there are seven third grade teachers with about 15 -16 students each, so that is where the position would be lost, that happened to be me. My class was then split up among the remaining six teachers classes. Fortunately  though there was a teacher who at the beginning of the school year decided she would be taking a year leave of absence, so there was a vacancy in first grade, so that is where I was being moved to.  I will be starting with my new class Tuesday.  At first I was beyond overwhelmed, moving classrooms, setting up my new room, planning, and taking over a class where there have been 3 previous subs since the start of the school year, and leaving an amazing third grade team! After meeting the little firsties on Thursday all of the overwhelming feeling went away and I am so excited.  I am such a primary person, and those third graders have a lot of sass.  I did my final internship in a first grade classroom with an amazing teacher (The Go To Teacher Blogger) and I feel like with my progress towards the work-life balance and being in familiar territory of first grade that it is going to be a fabulous year!