First day of school
Mansfield ISD is on block schedule. My schedule is below for reference. I’ve been teaching for 24 years, and I still hate the first couple days of school. I’m ready to just be in the grove and get going. However, I know it takes the whole first six weeks to get everyone familiar with policies and procedures. Because this is the first day, I’ll begin breaking down by class what I did and what I’m doing to prepare for upcoming things.
My Schedule
1- Journalism 1
2- Independent Study (mostly editors or acts as a second class for everyone)
3- Journalism 1
4- conference
5- Photo 2, 3, Broadcast 1, 2, 3
6- Newspaper
7- Yearbook
8- conference
Journalism 1
I’ve said since COVID students have not wanted to get involved. They were lazy. They were not interested in anything. Hopefully, by the numbers I have in Journalism 1, that has changed! I have a computer lab of 30 computers and tables for 30. Right now, I have 34 in one class and 39 in the other. I can’t handle taking anyone out! I want to keep them all. My guess is they will level out a bit in a few days with schedule changes.
For the first day, I just “tell stories.” I know schedules will change, so I don’t want to start in on the curriculum just yet. Isn’t what we do in journalism is “tell stories”? Legacy opened in 2007, and I was one of the first people hired. I love to tell stories about the school. Stories about students who sat in the desks before them now. Stories about myself. Stories about my family. Day 1 is just talk.
Behind the Scenes
I called our photo company about photo day, scheduled group photos for November, got an idea of how many seniors missed their photo day and then discussed the background colors for seniors. Last year’s background was a bit dark. You’ll hear me complain A LOT about the amount of paperwork Mansfield Independent School District requires. I spend most of my hour-and-a-half conference period completing paperwork for ad sales, book sales, fundraising permission, submitting names of photographers to the athletics department, and completing forms from past purchase orders this summer. Yall, this is why we’re leaving education. I also updated my Canvas course for Journalism 1. I made sure all of my links on legacystudentmedia.com were working. Next class we’ll start going over our policies.
No Red Ink- I set up the whole six-weeks grading period for noredink.com. This website is life-chaning. It’s a grammar enrichment program that allows you to pick topics, and it grades everything for you! Super easy to set up too! I spend maybe 20 minutes getting the five lessons ready.
