nonstop paperwork.

Today was our first day of seminar and PACT [Performance Assessment for California Teachers]. We got tons more paperwork and went over more of the requirements for this quarter. Thank god I've already started a calendar to map out all of my due dates or else I'd be really overwhelmed.

At the beginning of seminar, our supervisor had us answer three questions about our first day of school at our elementary school, which was yesterday. Although I don't remember it word for word, this is pretty much what I wrote:


1. The thing that surprised me the most was that a lot of the students didn't know their last name. When asked to write their first and last name at the top of their papers, I noticed that many of them had to keep checking their name tag so that they could copy it. [Later, my master teacher told me that learning how to write their first and last name is a standard in Kindergarten. I guess these kids forgot everything over the summer. Makes me wonder if year-round might be better.. hmm].

2. The thing that I expected to happen but didn't was that the students would be rowdy. Overall, the students were good stayed on task. [My master teacher told me that the first day/week is very telling of how the rest of the year will go. Even though there were a couple kids that we were told to keep an eye on, the class was pretty well-behaved so hopefully that's a good sign].


3. The most important thing that I learned was to keep transitions smooth and connect everything. [Mrs. T was constantly referring to things that she taught in Language Arts while she was teaching Science and it's good to point that out and reiterate to students].


Okay, time to go organize my life, haha. Bye for now!