Exhausted and Excited

9.27.10 By Aira Jackson-Sams

Last week I met with my BTR induction coach and the first thing I said was “I’m exhausted!”  I always forget how much energy and work is required to get everyone (including myself) acclimated to a new school year.  The new year brings a barrage of things that need to be done to make sure that my class and I are ready to get down to the business of learning.  This year I was focused on making sure that all of my students had returned their emergency forms that highlight major health issues and allergies (several of my students have such severe asthma that hospilitization is a normal occurance), so having current contact info for my parents/guardians and medical actions plans are extremally important.  Equally as important has been making sure that all of my parents/guardians are aware of the rigourous Boston Pulic School first grade standards, especially for those students who are new to the Boston Public Schools.

Yet the most crucial aspect of the begining of the school year for my grade 1 students is setting a up a classroom community that is safe and routine-centric so that it enables students to thrive.  Routine-centric???  Yes, there is a routine for everything - from what you do when you enter the classroom to how we line up to how we sit on the rug for our mini-lessons, to name just a few.  I have found as I enter my third year of teaching that it is neccessary to have high expectations and not to leave certain aspects of how to run the classroom up to chance.  (The school day is short enough, I do not want to spend my time with 22 variations of how to line up for lunch).  So the routines are crucial and how those routines are learned and reinforced is through positive reinforcement, complimenting students (individually and as a class) immediatly when they do what is expected.  It is these routines that will be framework of our class; they will become almost innate and when they do…we as a class will be able to use the extra time and energy toward array of other classroom activities, such as cooking, arts and crafts, and/or field trips!  But until then…routines, routines, routines.