First day of School

I feel like I've been hit with a truck. I thought I was ready. I had my papers, my speeches, my name tags, everything ready, but then the kids came in and I thought "What do I do now?" It felt like it took me a few minutes to get everything back in focus and then I was okay. At least I hope I didn't sound too much like an imbecile to the parents who were in there to watch their baby start their first day of either grade 1 or Kindergarten. But little things kept surprising me...how fast my first speech went. I thought for sure it was 10 minutes, but it was only 5. I had a birthday boy in my room today, so I quickly had to find the birthday hat, birthday sticker and have everyone sing the birthday song. The K students just wanted to talk and play and didn't know, or didn't want to, sit and do things together. I had forgotten how the K's are at the beginning of the year. Sure I had K's last year, but my latest memory was of them in June, ready for Grade 1. These are beginners again...I need to remember!
I had forgotten how much energy it took to be a new teacher in a new school with a new class. And I had forgotten how fast time goes...before I knew it, it was time to send the little gaffers home.Whew! Felt like a whole day, but it was only half. What will it be like tomorrow??
And yet the toughest half was yet to come. Because of the number crunch, our classes are all basically filled to capacity. There are not enough funds to have more teachers in the district. Our principal put it this way. We have about 25 more students in our school, but we've lost a teacher. Those 25 new students, plus the 25 or so that were in that teacher's class all have to be absorbed by the teachers left in the school. So today, after we had seen the "whites of their eyes", we knew we had to do some switching. The K's were too full, the upper intermediate classes had some room, and so we had to iron out the wrinkle from the K classes up. We took the last hour of a 3 hour staff meeting to figure this all out. I took in 4 new students, and pushed 7 out, with up to 4 more K's coming in as our school starts to accept cross-boundary requests. It's absolutely crazy.
And then after the dust sort of settled, my teaching partner and I tried to reconfigure the classroom. Out goes most of the grade 1 desks, in comes some more K tables. We needed 6 more chairs. We had to make name tags for the cloak room, the welcome poster, the table spots, etc. I finally left around 4 and realized when I got home that our son needed to eat within the hour and be out the door shortly after for soccer practice. What to make?? We didn't have pasta sauce, we had just had rice, we had no potatoes in the house, ... oh, I know, I'll make pancakes. A special meal for the first day of school. Oh..we don't have mix. No problem, I can make it from scratch. What??? We have NO milk and NO milk powder! So much for that. Hope the eggs and mix will stay till tomorrow. So it was toast, beans, salad and whatever else people could find.
And now I just needed to write that all down before I could let it go. I am excited for this school year. After the craziness of this week, I am sure the class, and me, will be able to settle down and enjoy our year together. And with K being the majority this year, play will be easier to do! And now I'm going to work out. I need to!