First Day of School

I am exhausted! Today was Back to School for Canyons School District. For some reason, ever since being in grade school, I have always had a hard time sleeping the night before going back to school. There is just too much to think about! This morning, I pulled myself out of bed at 5:20am, put on my new black and white striped Maxi dress and took off to open this amazing, brand-new high school that you see on your left. It was exciting to be part of the morning welcoming crowd: my student body officers handed out candy and greeted each kid with, "Have a sweet day," as they walked in the front doors. The mascot was outside, all dressed up in a Charger costume. The cheerleaders performed stunts. There was a great energy as the commons area filled with kids. Once the bell rang to begin class, I scrambled to get the student body officers organized in teams to read off the morning announcements, make posters and take pictures of this monumental day. The news station even came in to report on our new, beautiful (yet crowded) state-of-the-art school. http://www.ksl.com/?sid=26506967&nid=148&title=portable-classrooms-added-at-overfilled-new-draper-high-school&fm=home_page&s_cid=queue-1
If you think that is cool, Big Buddha is coming on Wednesday!

As we were planning the festivities for the week, the head custodian came into 1st period to greet the student body officers. He was very let down, though, to see a piece of gum already smashed into the carpet. "It hasn't even been one day and there is gum already in the carpet?? Come on, guys! Treat your school better than that!" How embarrassing. I don't understand kids mistreating such a beautiful place. I remember turning the desks upside-down at Copper Hills at the end of each school year and seeing them just covered in gum. Why is that a cool thing to do? Gross.

Once he left, we got out our school's fight song. We are teaching it to the student body at the Hello Assembly on Friday. We put on the synthesized instrumental music track for all 29 of us to sing. Student government is not really a choir class, but it turned that way today--we had an interesting group of voices, to say the least. Truly, we had a great time, laughing at ourselves as we all tried to pick up the melody and rhythm of this new song. I hope we're ready by Friday.

After student government, I taught two French 2 classes. I got many blank stares as I gave them simple commands in French like asking them to take out a paper and pencil. They said that their teacher last year never spoke to them in French, gave tons of book work and showed several movies like Ratatouille TWICE! Oh, I have my work cut out for me. The time flew by. I gave each kid a cracker with Nutella on it and we all ate it at the same time. They had to shout out, "C'est délicieux!" or "C'est dégoutant!" depending on whether or not they liked the Nutella.

This might sound silly, but my favorite thing today was just sitting at my desk once everybody had left, and admiring my classroom. I worked hard to put that together. On Saturday, I hemmed up my window curtains for three hours and they look so professional, if I do say so myself. I love all the posters of the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and other French landmarks that I carefully placed around my walls. I am proud of my food package bulletin board with langues de chat and gateaux aux carottes wrappers. I reminded myself that even though this is an exhausting job, it is so neat to be able to be creative and share my passion with the upcoming generation. Tomorrow I get to face a French 1 class of 43 students. It sounds like a crowd. We'll have to see how it goes!