How my day started...

God woke me up to this beautiful sunrise this morning! Today is my 1st day back to teaching, and what a wonderful way to start it off right!! Thank You Jesus!!!

This is the view from my closet:

This is my walk to school:

I'm trying some new things this semester. I created a "comportamentul scară" (behavior ladder) and made a "sac bunătăți" (goody bag). There are 10 steps on the comportamentul scară and 5 clothespins - each a different color - representing each of my 5 classes. I explained to them that if they are good in class - meaning they listen, participate, and respect each other - they will go up a step. Once they reach the top, for the next class we will do something fun of their choosing (within reason, of course, and the "fun" class will be decided while they're still on the 1st step) instead of having a lecture. I had 2 classes today - 8th and 5th grades...8th went up a step, 5th remained on the bottom step...sigh. I'm hoping that the obraznic (misbehaved) classes will be motivated to be better once they see the more well-behaved classes moving up the ladder...time will tell.

Then i showed them my sac bunătăți and explained that if one student is particularly good during class, they can pick a surpriză (surprise) from the bag. No one was particularly good today, so it has yet to be utilized, but i have some cool stuff in there ranging from snacks to scarves to soap. Hopefully it too will become a motivation for them to be better behaved...again, time will tell...