First Day of the New School Year

OK, after some prodding from my good buddy, smileygirl, I've decided to go ahead and take the plunge. I've been contemplating starting a blog for a while now, and Laura gave me the final little push I needed to get going. Plus, I've recently finished graduate school (yay me!) so I have a little free time on my hands! ;-) Well, as much free time as a single, working mother with two jobs and a teenager can have! In between all that, I've been dealing with a remodeling job in my basement that is fast approaching the two year mark. I'm hoping this blog will provide me an outlet for venting my frustration with the slow progress of this project, among many other things that happen in my everyday life.


The real reason I've been wanting to start blogging is to share with others the day-to-day adventures of being a school teacher in the "inner city." (God, I hate that term!) I teach Kindergarten in a Chicago neighborhood known as Englewood. Last I checked, I believe Englewood had the dubious distinction of being known as the murder capital of the nation. Last weekend, another little girl was shot and killed in Englewood, bringing the total number of Chicago Public School children in Englewood killed this year alone to 30. 30! OK, I'm not ready to get on my soapbox just yet, but I want to give you an idea of the area in which I teach.

So, today was the teachers' first day back to work. Our students will be joining us next Tuesday, the day after Labor Day. These first few days back are always crazy busy, with meeting after meeting, and us trying to put our rooms back together after they were destroyed over the summer during "summer cleaning." The funny thing is, our rooms NEVER look any cleaner when we come back in August than they did when we left them at the end of June. The furniture is just moved around and our stuff is all over. Any real cleaning is done when we come back, and do it ourselves. Can you see how well that masters degree is already serving me? I still get to sweep up rodent droppings and dead roaches all by myself. Who could ask for anything more?!

Since this is my very first post on my very first blog, I'm going to try and keep the complaining and negativity to a minimum. I'm really hoping to share with all of you the good, the bad and the ugly of being a Chicago Public School teacher. Most days I laugh, many days I cry, some days I do both. Several times even! I hope my posts inspire, inform and entertain you. And, if nothing else, make you see why we need our summers off!

I want to leave you with one of my favorite quotes:

All children are gifted.
Some just open their presents later than others.

--Anonymous

Thanks for stopping by. Be sure to leave me your thoughts and reactions (once the posts have some substance, of course!) and come back soon!