Start of the Year in Life

Well, we’ve had 4 1/2 days of school, and we’re out today. We had a pipe burst in our PreK room. It flooded 3 rooms, and shut our water off. My classroom is up the hill, away from this room, so it’s no where near me. My heart breaks for our PreK teacher, though. She puts so much of herself and her money into that room. She just bought a gorgeous animal print area rug for her room (I would guess around $100), along with working hard to make a wonderfully warm and welcoming room for her little ones. The other two rooms aren’t classrooms. One is a therapy room and the other is storage.
School is starting pretty good for me so far. I loved these kids already, since they were mine last year. We did get about 13 new ones, which is more new than we normally get. We’re now all at 29 kids. That’s a lot of kiddos, we can each have 4 more before we hit state limits, though.
Working on my new hall with my co-workers is intense. Since I’m sure I’ll be talking about my hallmates, I figured I’d introduce them. (Of course all are morphs of their real names - because I’m a paranoid freak lol)
My 2 5th grade coworkers
Jan - next door, teaches math. She’s quiet and sweet.
Amanda - teaches ELA across the hall. She’s a wonderful person, just a little intense. I spend a lot of time just calming her down. I knew that about her before I moved up. It’s her OCD/anxiety combo.
Then I have the 6th grade:
Kathy - math, directly across the hall - she’s…well…a lot She’s also a source of a lot of frustration in our school for a variety of reasons, some are that we get an intense talk each year about not smoking on school grounds. The only smokers are the 3 6th grade teachers, but we all have to hear it. She goes out to her car to smoke when she’s supposed to be taking care of kids (at lunch, recess, etc)
Dana - ELA - Sweet sweet lady, would literally hand you the shirt off her back, but she doesn’t think her 6th graders should be held to the same rules as the rest of our kids. She plays a local rock station in her room all day (but we aren’t even allowed to play PG movies) and lets kids charge their phones in her room (which aren’t allowed - we had an intense talking to about the process of taking kids phones and following school board policy on this).
Leo - science next door. I’m torn on this one. He’s a great man, I taught with him when I first started. He has his own take on how the kids should behave and he thinks they need more freedom. So he lets them play/talk/shout in the hall and cafeteria, and he refuses to change anything. My principal has asked me multiple times to try and get him to change to new teaching strategies and he just shuts me down. Always politely, but shuts me down.
Amanda and Kathy are besties and that leads to a lot of stress, because many come to Amanda with questions about what Kathy is doing and she gets mad and chews out Kathy. Ordinarily I’d say people need to mind their own business, but Kathy is held up as someone we should all try to emulate with our teaching. Like I said - long story.
So, with the kids it’s going great - with the hall - well, I’m working on it. I miss working with my crew though. :(