A day in the life of...

So I've been a little occupied lately and haven't been good about keeping up with posting - sorry! Then I realized that the thing that occupies most of my time I haven't even written about! So, welcome to Ta'iala Academy.  My school is in its 2nd year of operation and from all accounts is running much smoother than last year.  We have about 64 students enrolled which is double last year so that's good - no chance of closing in the middle of the year or anything like that.  Job stability!! I teach reading and writing to the 3-8 grades.  I have the 7/8 graders first for 90 min, then the 3/4 grade, then the 5/6 graders after lunch.  My day moves along pretty quickly.  For the most part behavior is not a problem and I know that I really lucked out! Night and day from my last classroom!! We discuss poetry and literature every day and also have time to write (usually).  I don't have many books in my classroom so we take the poems and stories that we read from my college lit textbooks.  Good thing I lugged those around for the past 12 years!! The kids seem happy - and they should be because I have informed them all that I am their favorite teacher and that my class is their favorite.  If they ever disagree with me I very quickly tell them how wrong they are and how great my class is.  I love brainwashing children!! I will have to post pictures of the school when I've taken them so you can see where I spent most of my day.  The building itself used to be a house and they've converted it into more of a proper school.  The construction that I worked around this summer added some classrooms and a cafeteria but it is still a pretty small school.  My classroom was the front entrance for the original house and I've got the only doorway that has sort of a porch roof.  That is nice on the rainy days of which there are plenty.  My door faces the play area field or malai where they play tetherball, football, or just run around.  We don't have a lot of playground equipment and what little we do have is not really up for some rough playing children (we need industrial strength equipment for some of these kids!) so needless to say there is less for them to play with every day.  I get there around 7:30 (amazing I can get there that early huh?!), the school day starts at 8, and is over at 2:30 so it's not a bad length of time.  Once 2:30 hits it is time for us to start the after school program which runs until 5.  There are 3 of us teachers there; we feed the kids a snack, then have them do homework for an hour, then we do some kind of activity with them.  We just barely started the program 2 weeks ago.  The first week we studied Leonardo da Vinci and last week we learned first aid.  This upcoming week we will be studying Christopher Columbus.  It requires a lot of prep by myself and the other 2 teachers but it is usually worth it - the kids focus better and the time goes faster when it is all well organized.  When we just let them play I swear we are there forever! We have 25 kids enrolled so far and so it can be a little chaotic but it is usually fun.  I am generally there until 5:30 because there is always at least 1 parent that can't come on time to pick up their kid - grrr...  I don't have any breaks in the day as I have to be on duty for every recess and lunchtime and we don't have any extra people to cover this stuff.  I really miss going out for lunch(!) and I wouldn't mind 5 seconds away from children but that is what I signed up for so I can't complain too much.  At least the day usually goes by quickly.  With only having each class for 90 minutes there is no time to get sick of them or have something drag on forever.  I enjoy teaching only the 1 subject as well - teaching all subjects is for suckers - j/k! So that is pretty much my day and I thank you for joining me on this tour of my teaching day.