Back to school

School's been back in session for two days now, which hopefully explains why I haven't blogged in a couple days, as well. Usually I'm quite excited for school to start up again in the fall, and see the kids, new and returning, once again. I've got a couple of really good English 12 classes this year (and one that's so-so). I get to teach all the seniors every year and I quite enjoy the task. They are right on the verge, if not surpassing it, of being adults, both legally and, in many cases, emotionally/mentally. Of the four years I taught at the school I'm now at, there has been only one year that I didn't care a great deal for the senior class. Not that I didn't like them, but usually I do care, literally, a great deal for those kids; I really like them, and by the end of the year, I'm sad to see them go. This year looks like it might shape up to be the second year like that. There are quite a number of kids that I genuinely like (and I've known most of these kids for four years now), but there's another substantial percentage that I won't be missing a great deal once they depart. In the meantime, we've got a lot of classtime before the end of the school year, and I may well grow attached to more of them as time goes on.

My other two classes couldn't be more different. I've got 30 fun, energetic kids in my Theatre class -- we played a theatre game today and every one of them was really having fun with it. I don't always see that. My last class is Mass Media. This is a course I have taught before, but don't always teach. I don't really care for a whole lot of it; I find the material kind of dull, so I'm sure my class does as well. I've only got 15 students in this class (I had 18 on my original class list, but 3 have dropped it), and normally a small class is good, but this group is lethargic and dull. I couldn't get much out of them today while trying to discuss something.

I'm sure my opinions will change as time goes on, but after two days, I'm just kind of having an "okay" time teaching right now, and usually I'm much more up than that. However, I think I can blame part of that, at least, on my broken arm, which makes things difficult in the classroom.