First day went well overall! A lot of peopleing after not for a while,but I think I hit it off well with my kids. No class over 20 students yet, but they claim there are more coming. We'll see how the cell phone thing goes, that's going to be an issue I think.

Oh man oh man, I just found out that for the first time in many years, there's not another class in my room during my prep time! I can actually spend more time on arranging the classroom, lab setup, and actually doing grading at my desk!.

What do you want to know?.

At the start of the summer, I made my summer to do list. All the appointments and errands I didn't get to do during the year. All the people and places I wanted to visit. Made a lot of money and hit the gym a lot, but don't think I've ever done so poorly on the rest of the list.

Other teachers see the lack of follow through I was getting, so of course there isn't going to be more teacher buy in. Sure I got good test scores, but the students disliked my enforcement and I was a burden to admin for filling out the reports they asked for.

From the admins perspective, the schools struggle with the policy was that all the teachers weren't enforcing it. This is true, I would have had an easier time if all the other teachers were doing it to, but that doesn't excuse the lack of follow through when I did my part.

Last year my old school tried out a new cell phone policy. My new school spoke to them to establish our own policy. But I guess they only spoke to the admin about what worked and what didn't. Let's just say they had a wildly different look at it than I did.

Trying to readapt my gym routine for the school year. Over the summer, I didn't take a day off if I was home and would go for 2-3 hours at a clip. I haven't been in this kind of shape in 20 years. But now it's maybe 4 days a week, 1-2 hours each time.

My district is bragging about how fully staffed they are for the start of school this year. It's not that they are better organized and we are more desirable. We lost thousands of students and cut hundreds of teaching positions.

Go hard or go home.

They divided us into teams this week to do a little competition with each other. Today the task was to get as many people to dress in their team color and take a picture together. When the other team was going I fake cried to get one of them to talk to me and miss their picture.

The teacher who had my room last year is still listed as having classes this year. But I haven't met him yet, he's not been in the building at all this week and nobody can or will tell me anything about it.

Freshman orientation is today so the 9th graders come in and follow their schedule for the morning to get a head start on everyone else. Zero strudents from my first period class showed up.

New teacher field trip today. Took a bus and walking tour through the neighborhoods that come to our school. Visited some of the feeder schools and businesses, little history and background of the area and our students. Then a local pizza shop gave us lunch. Good day.

The strip mall sign I drive past every morning said "good luck teachers and students" from last August to October. This year it's "Buy one bottle of Vodka, get the second for 50% off".

Oh man, I should pretend not to know how "reply all" works or when not to use it.

Ohhhh, we just got the talk on appropriate social media usage

Everyone I mentioned this to, including my DC has told me to expect 25-30 before all is said and done.

Green flag- We've got a committee here for how to best support the "middle kids" the ones who are behaving, who are passing, but they aren't the high honors/AP students either, and often get overlooked.

Green flag- Turns out I do know a few people here already. And based on some things I've done around the district, many others know me and have been very welcoming.

Green flag- Department chair is very open to me trying different things, decorating the room, bringing in some class pets and adding some bird feeders outside my window.