As any self-respecting teacher will tell you, the REAL beginning of the new year happens in September, not in January. We generally don’t stay up past midnight the evening before the first day of school and the drinking is usually postponed until AFTER the first week of school is completed. After the first day, maybe? In any case, January 1st seems arbitrary in education. If anything, for me at least, it marks a halfway point of the year, even though I’m sure that’s not arithmetically accurate. And I don’t even stay up late on New Year’s Eve.

True confession. I’ve always disliked the first days of school, and that’s true from my years as a Lower Elementary teacher, Upper Elementary teacher, and now in the Junior Class (or Lower Secondary as I’m hearing more and more). There’s that awkwardness of learning new names and new protocols, new bedtimes and new wake-up times. The routine of meals is disrupted and so hunger rears up at 10:30a in the morning. I’m of course speaking of the adult’s transition, but we can obviously say the same for our students. With older students, the first couple of days also feels like a data dump, there’s so much information to get across. I’m much more content once we’ve gotten into the flow of the year. I’ve spun a plate on a stick and have handed it off to children to find engagement. Here’s Geometry! Here’s a Stamp Game! Here’s Biology! It’s difficult for a classroom to become “normalized” when there’s been no “normal” for three months.

And so, the first weeks for me was always what I called “Academic Triage”.  You know how at an accident scene (I know, I know, bear with this metaphor a bit.  I’m NOT describing classrooms as accident scenes) doctors and nurses will examine each person and put them in different categories?  That’s sort of  a good strategy for those first weeks.  Get a math sample, a reading sample, a writing sample.  If you have kids coming from the Primary program, give them a few addition and subtraction problems to work out on the stamp game.  If you have kids that have been in Elementary classrooms, and they recognize a Montessori material, see what they can do.  What you’re looking to find here is groups that can work together.  Do you have two or three students that have a facility with math (or reading  or writing)?  How many groups do you have?  A group of eleven six-year olds may have three distinct math groups:  Group One: Can add and subtract without materials and are dividing with the stamp game, using the multiplication boards to memorize facts. Group Two: Adding and subtracting and dividing with stamp game, positive snake game, using the strip boards.  Group Three:  What’s Addition?

Happy New Year!