Busy day.

It's a bit after 5:00 and I'm alone in the office. I'm sitting in my chair for what feels like the first time in hours. I wanted to jot down a few things here to give a snapshot of what my typical day looks like. As I write that I wonder if there is such a thing as a typical school administrator's day. Anyway, I usually arrive a little before 7:00, typically as the buses as just rolling out of the yard to head up the hill and start picking up the students. I take the quiet time before everyone arrives to organize and plan for the day. I write down my morning announcements, check and respond to emails, update my to-do list and do a few quiet things for about half an hour. This morning I had three students pay a visit at about 7:20, which cut my quiet planning time a little short. It was alright, as I want the kids to get to know me, just as I'm getting to know them. At about 7:45 I went up to the upper building to deliver some teacher's manuals to our new RSP teacher, Julie Burton, and to touch base with a few of the THMS teachers. When I headed back down to the office there was a new 7th grader who had just enrolled, so I walked him up to his classroom to met Mr. Gold, and along the way I introduced him to Mrs. Bickley, and Mrs. Anderson, as those are the teachers he'd be rotating through. When I came back to the office I had a parent who wanted to chat about a few things, so we talked for a short while after I did the morning announcements. I then went back to the upper building to see if there were some extra chairs lying about for Mr. Dunlap, and was able to secure a few that I think will work. While I was in his room, I had to find some 5th grade math materials to make copies of for Mike Brown, our 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade teacher up in Pinecrest who is missing some materials. I then decided to see what was happening in some of the upper grade classrooms. I sat in for a few minutes in Mrs. Anderson's class as she was explaining what she expected her student to have in their binders (organization is not an average 7th graders strong suit!). Mr. Gold was was going over the scientific process with the 6th graders and having them read about what a hypothesis is. Mrs. Olsen had 8th graders reading through "My Brother Sam is Dead" while Mrs. Bickley was working with the 5th graders on their "mad minute" math facts. I continued my short classroom observations by heading down to the lower building and I sat in as Mrs. Ransom was discussing fiction versus non-fiction in relation to "The Boxcar Children". As I finished visiting a couple more classes it was recess time. Since it's taken this many words to cover the first hour and a half of the day, I don't think I'll write more tonight about the rest of the day! I have a good feeling about where we are as a school, and the dedicated teachers that are working with the students.

On another note, we are still waiting for the state to release the API scores. They were supposed to be released to the schools last week, and made public today. We've received no word yet. Wonder what's going on at the State Department of Education.