CHRIS
TOY
Diary #3
In
the Middle of a Mess,
a Good First Day of School
The day before the night before....
It's amazing, it's less than 24 hours before the students arrive and I don't think the school's even close to being ready! The construction crews have done a pretty good job of clearing out of the inside of the building, but it still looks like a construction zone in the front lobby. There's empty boxes and old teaching materials to be discarded in the hallways, construction rubble by the exits, and the office area has overflowing trash containers and partially used copier paper reams all over the place. The custodial staff worked overtime on Friday but didn't get to everything. The numbers identifying where homebases are to line up for fire drills hadn't been painted so I ran to WalMart and bought stencils and white spray paint. It looked pretty good after an hour or so of work! At 7 PM I posted the last of the homebase lists around the school, carried some trash to the overflowing dumpsters containing construction debris, turned out the lights and went home. The first day: A clean slate.... The first day went just fine. I don't know if it's because I worked over the holiday weekend, or whether it would have gone well even if I hadn't. I think it's probably because I have a core of veteran staff who know what needs to be done. I arrived at 7 AM in time to schedule a new student before getting out to the parking lot to direct the first day's rush of traffic. Nervous 6th grade students with even more nervous parents filled the driveway, dropping their children off to begin their year. Things went pretty well until the construction vehicles and the dumpster truck arrived to block the driveway! I actually had a pretty good time directing traffic. It was an opportunity to meet and greet students and parents. It was a bit tricky since the traffic pattern had to be changed due to the construction. The teachers did a great job of being visible and available in the halls before school began. I don't think there were any problems at all with students locating homebases or classes. There were some minor glitches in some students' schedules, but nothing that the teachers didn't handle and inform me about. It's interesting how every student I saw seemed to be happy about being back at school with friends, greeting last year's teachers, and meeting their new ones. Everyone has a clean slate. How can we make the positive feelings last for everyone? I spent the rest of the morning checking into classrooms, especially new staff and staff who had undergone changes in locations due to the renovations. All classrooms I visited were engaged in organizational and introductory activities. Teachers were taking the time needed to learn students' names, what their summer was like, and what they were like. They were also letting students know what their expectations were for classroom behavior and schoolwork. Lunch was an adventure.... Lunch was interesting and will definitely take some getting used to. In the past we had three grade level lunches and three recesses. The flow of students from recess to lunch was quite orderly. Students on recess were expected to be in the fields, the gym, or designated rooms such as the library, computer room, or a classroom with a teacher. Students at lunch were expected to be in the cafeteria or in a room with a teacher. Due to the construction the cafeteria space has been reduced to two-thirds of its original space. It will eventually become the library. Anyway, the change has resulted in our scheduling only two lunches and two recesses. The first lunch will be 8th grade and one half of the 7th grade. The second lunch will be 6th grade and the other half of the seventh grade. We've allowed students to take food out of the cafeteria and eat in any room, provided they clean up after themselves. Teachers will be on duty, moving through the corridors and checking rooms. It's a big change and I'm hoping the students will be able to handle the additional responsibility. Time will tell. The first day's lunch went reasonably well. Only one of the classrooms required some extra cleaning at the end of the lunch block. The students wandered a bit, looking for places to stake out as their own, but settled into rooms or the cafeteria by the middle of the 25-minute lunch block. I think this will work smoothly by next week. Important messages need repeating.... We always end the first day of school with a staff meeting to touch base and give staff members an opportunity to share information. Over all, the staff agreed that it had been a very good start to the new school year. After some short organizational information was exchanged I returned to the issue of the parent survey. It got pretty quiet. I reviewed some of my comments from the previous staff meeting, but focused on what I felt we needed to do in order to changed some of the negative perceptions parents had about our school. One thing I have concluded is that I need to be more active and vocal about what our school's mission is. I have come to realize that I need to repeat myself regularly, even though it may seem redundant to me. I forget how many different people I interact with on a daily basis and how many different contexts I work in with people. I know what I think, and I hear myself say things, but not everyone hears me for all kinds of reasons. So, one of the first things I will repeat over and over again is the need to communicate with parents about our school's mission, its beliefs, and its programs. Our open house is next Wednesday and I have asked that all teachers provide parents with a course outline that includes course expectations, how to get in contact with them, grading procedures, class projects, and the major units of study to be covered during the year. I also asked for any teachers who were interested in taking a closer look at the parent survey with the goal of developing ways to obtain more helpful, specific information about the concerns raised in it. A couple teachers approached me after the meeting to express an interest. Thinking back on the last 24 hours, its always amazing how we go from not being close to being ready to open, all the way to a smooth and positive transition from summer vacation to the end of good first day of the new school year!
