"Mr. Hardie, you look like a man on Lifetime Television."
Madeleine, thanks for all the good writing. I knew you wouldn't be around forever, but this is hard.
We are nowhere close to being in a routine or being in a groove--transition and instability abound. I'm at Gregory Elementary (the RSD doesn't have any middle school designations right now, so elementary schools are kindergarten through 8th grade) and right now we are teaching 6th through 8th grades. We're housed on the 2nd floor of Douglas High School and hearing that we will move to modular units at our Gentilly site "soon." ("Soon" is a wildly flexible term here in NOLA, as things seem to move even more slowly than the typical Southern slow, and when I say anything about the very real operational chaos of various institutions in my new home city the locals say, with a substantial amount of glee, "Welcome to New Orleans!")
More transition--apparently many families didn't know that school started yesterday. So I had six 8th graders in my all-day section yesterday. Four of those were on my roster of seventeen. We start "changing classes" today (which is a great relief to those of us who aren't prepared to deal with self-contained classrooms!) and hopefully we'll see many more of those children's faces!
I've been blogging in my mind but not recording anything, and it's been a tumultuous 2 weeks. Elements include moving, drinking hurricanes, loss of power at my house, living in the church office (thanks and love to Redeemer NOLA!), doing without a stove, teacher in-service, gorgeous food, finding a gym 3 blocks away from my house (YAY), and of course lots of coffee. I've almost run through my supply of Greyfriars.
I hope to back-blog soon, but classroom planning takes precedence of course.