A new school year

Weird thing. A year ago my new school year was starting and I walked into the hallway. Looked out the window. I saw six guys using string trimmers to mow the two enormous fields across the street from the school. This year?

Must be budget cuts. Only five dudes working the string trimmers today. Can you zoom in and spot all five?

A fun first day with kids. My schedule this year is more evenly distributed over a two week period.

No days without a prep period. Noice. The blue and geeen above are my high level classes that are preparing for the IB exams at the end of their senior year. The others are still high school, but lower grades. Glad I don't have any eighth grade this year. Lucky me. Lastly, I won't have an advisory to worry about this year. I have five of them that meet during the last block on Tuesday. As the tenth grade level leader I've been relieved of having an individual group of tenth graders to manage. I will have larger responsibilities related to all the tenth graders. When the week of China trips happens at the end of the school year I'll get smacked with a lot of responsibility all at once. The timing will be nice as my twelfth graders will be finishing up with testing at the same time.

I feel like I've learned a lot this past year and I'm putting it into practice. Working with kids who don't have strong English skills isn't new, but my past experience isn't near the volume I'm dealing with now. I've got a lot of kids that struggle because English is their second language, but they all have solid work ethic and often just need a small bit of help. I started offering vocabulary lists with definitions in both English and Chinese. It made a difference last year and I plan to keep offering the same helper this year with each new unit I teach.

Trip planned to Shanghai this coming weekend with Aiyun. Looking forward to that. Big hotel. Perhaps stroll by the river. Wondering if I'll get the auto-upgrade that I've experienced in the past. Fingers crossed.