Some Cliff's Notes from the last couple weeks.

Kyandrea and Lakesa are still works in progress, but the classroom is
really growing.  It's exciting to see the room develop with
all of the work that my students and I have been doing.  There
are definitely some things that I pushed the kids to do too
quickly (group work takes a lot of work and training in order
for kids to be successful!).  I'm trying to take things slow,
focusing on one or two major things a week.

One thing that I'm trying to do is great every student at the
door with a handshake in the morning.  Some kids like it and
some aren't big fans, but it feels right to me.  I'm also
trying to do activities in Morning Meeting where I can be
goofy and do silly things like dance.

I did lose my patience with the kids on Tuesday.  They were
off and I wasn't feeling so great either, and there was some
yelling which I'm not proud of, but on Wednesday we all had a
better day.  Everyday I feel more and more confident and
comfortable, although I had a panic attack on Sunday when I
started thinking about all the different things I needed to
plan for the whole week.  But it helps to understand that I'm
not alone, that all the other teachers are overwhelmed at
times as well.

One other thing, the Teacher Advancement Program meetings (we
meet in grade clusters and talk about different systems and
practices we're implementing in our classrooms) really freaked
me out on Tuesday.  I was intimidated by all the coherent
ideas that these teachers were implementing in their
classrooms, whereas my focus on differentiation was in many
ways half-baked and not time appropriate.  But once I get over
that, I think the meetings are a good thing because they give
me a lot of ideas to steal.