So today was my first day.

This is my obligatory first day of school photo
except that I forgot in my rush this morning
and this is after.  (If you couldn't tell already from
the stains where I spilled on myself.

It went well.  Not off-the-charts awesome like the videos they like to show us at our TFA trainings, but it went well.  I think it was a good start to what I'm sure will be a great year. 

My morning started with very little sleep.  I finally got to bed around 1am and then I just couldn't sleep because I had millions of thoughts racing through my mind.  When my alarm went off at 5 I wouldn't exactly say that I was excited to jump out of bed.

When I got to school, I had to figure out how to make copies and finish up setting up my room and getting ready for my kiddos.  This morning I had 14 kids on my roster, which was more than the 6 I had at Meet the Teacher Night last Thursday.  I ended up having 18 kids by the end of the day and I have been told that this number will most likely change.

When the students showed up, I had little half sheets of paper directing them to put their backpacks in the lockers, find their seats, and begin their questionnaires.  About 15 minutes later while I was still getting kids at the door I realized that they were all sitting there doing nothing.  Hm, that's strange.  Except it wasn't because I forgot to print out the questionnaire and thus forgot to make copies, and they therefore had nothing to do.  So all my improv training kicked in, and I had one kid pass out binder paper and asked them to write about their summers.

For the next hour or so I bored them to death even though I was trying to be fun.  The fact is that kids don't like to just sit in their desks and listen to the teacher talk.  Go figure.  So then I decided on the spot to read "Where the Wild Things Are" in Spanish.  We talked about what our own personal monsters are, the things that hold us back from sailing to success.  Students mostly listed not being good at certain subjects to playing xbox to things being difficult.  Then they had to write down excuses that hold them back, and then come up with a solution.  Once they were done each student came to the front of the class and read their monster, excuse, and solution, and then recited the following: "My name is___________.  I am intelligent and I will overcome my monsters because I don't accept excuses and I have a community that will help me.  I am sailing to success."  Then they crumpled their papers and threw them into the trash.  I called this our "excuse funeral."

We also played Ms. Arrasmith jeopardy today.  My 5th grade teacher did this and I remember loving it, so I decided to do it too.  I grabbed a bunch of random items from my room like my soccer ball, ice skates, a  picture of my family, picture of my roommates, mask from Venice, Spanish flag, etc.  I told the kids they had to pay close attention and took one item out of the bag at a time.  I explained a little about what it represented in my life and allowed the kids to ask some questions.  Then I split the class into two groups, and they had to answer questions about what I had said.  One of my kids said this was his favorite part of the day.  It felt weird to be talking so much about myself, but they loved it so whatever.

At this point they started getting pretty ready, so we went out for a recess snack break.  I had a different activity planned for when we came in, but I knew that they would get too noisy.  So instead we read a book that I grabbed randomly from the library.  Hadn't even read it before but the librarian had recommended it.  So I internally panicked when it ended up being partly about racism trying to figure out what to do about that.  Luckily there was another theme in the book about a boy being inspired by birds and taking care of an atrium.  I turned it into a writing activity where they had to write about who or what inspires or motivates them.  They actually sat in silence writing for about 15 minutes which felt like quite a success.  I read through the pieces quickly after school and there was some really good stuff.  One girl wrote about me and said, "Ms. Arrasmith makes me work hard and motivates me.  Ms. Arrasmith is nice, fun and works hard to make to us understand all of our work done."  Another student said nature inspired him.  But then there was one student whose writing I could not decipher not because of the hand-writing but because it's inventive writing like that of a preschooler with very basic letters for each of the words.  I will have my plate full for sure.

I'm exhausted now that I'm actually getting to sit down after being on my feet for literally 12 hours.  I would be stoked except for that I know that I have hours of planning to do to prepare for tomorrow.  All in all, it wasn't an awesome day, it wasn't a bad day, but it was a good day.  At some points I looked around and couldn't believe that I was the one in charge.  Who put me in charge of these 18 students?  This morning seems like so long ago.  I was so excited that when my principal happened to pop in that my students were actually doing something and very involved.  She liked my activity so that was definitely a plus.

Also I found it funny when I asked my students how to get to the basketball courts and how they're supposed to get their lunches.  Luckily they didn't seem to mind that I have no clue what I'm doing.

Random funny things that my students said today:

"Hey Ms. Arrasmith, do you know how to dougie?"

(While standing outside practicing the dismissal procedure) "Ms. Arrasmith, did you know that kangaroos lick themselves when they're hot?  That's what I have to do sometimes.  But wait, no,  don't call me a kangaroo!"

"He won't let me fight my monster.  I want to work on my writing so I can battle my monster but he won't let me!"

Ok, well that's about it.  I have a feeling tomorrow will be a little bit more difficult since the adrenaline won't be pumping as much tomorrow.

Highlights

 So it's definitely been a while since I last posted.  Let me hit you with the highlights from the past few weeks:

My grown-up room courtesy of Ikea and my dad and sisters

1. I moved into my new apartment!  It was crazy moving in on a Thursday when I had training in Dallas the next morning, but so worth it to finally get all of my belongings out of my car!  Cara and I threw our stuff into our rooms and then slept on air mattresses in the living room.  It was like camping inside :)

2. My family came to visit me!  They were awesome.  For most of you that know me and how I hate making decisions, deciding on bedroom furniture was way more difficult than it should ever be for a human.  But, thanks to their patience and a 6 hour trip to Ikea, my room now looks lovely.  My dad and sisters were gracious enough to spend their time building the furniture for me while my mom and I unpacked and organized the kitchen and ran errands.  I think I might still be sleeping on the air mattress if they hadn't come.

3. While my family was here we went to visit my aunt and uncle's ranch.  So great to see them and so fun to explore the ranch.  Annika even got to ride a horse and Kaisa took a spin on the golf cart.

Cousin Allia and the girls at the ranch

4. There was a crazy storm today that caused a blackout today.  Luckily it only lasted for about an hour.  Also, like a good Arrasmith, I was prepared with flashlights.

Living room!

5. My roommate Rachael finally officially moved in after spending some time home in New Mexico.   Rachael had found a groupon for movers, so we were able to get away with carrying in only the small stuff.  The movers were CRAZY.  "Boss man" was the guy in charge and he was a very outspoken Jamaican man.  Then there was "rude boy," the second in command.  He didn't talk much, but he had worked with "bossman" before.  Then there was "cowboy," who was a native Texan, war vet, kilt-wearing man who was working his first day on the job.  Yes, he was wearing a cowboy hat and a kilt.  They were possibly the least professional individuals I have encountered in quite some time.  It was around dinner time when they started, and after we had helped unload the smaller stuff, Cara and I started making ourselves dinner in the kitchen.  That's right about when "bossman" started demanding that we give him dinner.  This was of course after he unplugged Cara's phone and started using her charger to charge his own phone.  We told them that we didn't get dinner as part of our job, but he kept making comments.  "Bossman" was also very rude to rudeboy, cowboy, and to us.  It would be an understatement to say that we were all relieved when they left.  It does make for a good story though.

Aunt and uncle's ranch

6. I went to some training sessions for TFA where we worked on our stuff for the first eight weeks.  It was really great to be back with everyone from our corps again.  We also got to get into our content areas and were able to learn what exactly would be helpful to us in our own areas.  During institute we learned a lot of general things that we would have to apply to our own situation, but this training was much more directed at specifically what we would be doing.  I was with all the other bilingual elementary teachers.

7. All this unstructured time off is driving me a little bit crazy.  I have way too much time on my hands and therefore have done some productive things like organize my room and cook.  I also started a free trial for Netflix and have gotten through a couple seasons of White Collar.  It's a great show that you should check out if you've never seen it.  We have district training this week and I'm hoping to gain some clarity about things like what language I'm supposed to use to plan my lessons, what reading MINDS on my schedule means, and why during a 9 hour school day my students don't have recess?

Another before shot of the living room/kitchen/dining area

8. I got Texas plates on my car.  I also will be receiving a Texas driver's license in the mail sometime soon.  I was forced to surrender my California one though which made me quite upset.  I almost couldn't believe it when the lady at the counter told me that I couldn't have it back.  I almost just told her "Never mind" about the whole Texas thing, but it was already too late.  Strike 1 for Texas.



I have a mailing address now!  Getting good old-fashioned snail mail and the occasional package are mighty fine surprises.  Message me for my Texas address.  I'm sure that I have forgotten something significant, but then again, I have been mostly boppin' around my apartment and making multiple trips to Target every day.  Well, that's all for now.  Enjoy this pic of Cara at our dining room table.

Cara being uber productive