Well, after yesterday’s histrionics, I can say that the first day passed by without a single “oh my gosh” incident.
Homeroom went well, as did my two calculus classes. (Although one is disproportionately larger than the other. Don’t yell at me, public school teachers, when I reveal the numbers and your brain’s penchant for witty sarcasm goes into overdrive for my kvetching: 15 students in one and 4 in the other. And no, that isn’t a typo and there is no missing digit.) Wednesday is very light on actual class time.
I also did both of my “duties” for the week (proctoring study hall, which no one attended because it was the first day, and sitting at the front desk in case students want to sign out for lunch). I led my homeroom in a discussion of the summer reading, whose theme was “banned books.” (The question I posed: come up with a book you think should be banned at our school.) I made my photocopies and got the printer to work half the time. (More than yesterday’s 20% success rate.) And I even had time to submit my summer curriculum grant form, so I get a little extra scrilla for all the work I did over the summer.
Tomorrow will be the real test, because I teach all four of my classes. And have a bunch of meetings.
The plan
Calculus: Continue reviewing functions, go into detail about domain and range, talk about course expectations in detail.
Multivariable Calculus: Go over course expectations in detail, start teaching about graphing simple equations in three dimensions.
Algebra II: Introductions, start on the basics of sets (element, subset, union, intersection)
With that, I’m out.
Continuous Everywhere but Differentiable Nowhere 
You do sets in Algebra 2? Weird. I started today with a unit I like to call “Factoring Boot Camp”.
Your class sizes sound heavenly – my 5 sections are not bad for public school at 23/21/18/18/11. (Already creeped up a bit today though.)
Good luck on day 2!
We didn’t last year, but we have a new department head this year and we’re trying to revamp the entire department’s curriculum. Apparently (although I haven’t done any looking into this because I hadn’t had tons of time yet), sets are on the SATs.
But I’m basically introducing and finishing sets in 2 days, simply to motivate union and intersection, which will help us with inequalities… and (eventually) domain.
So, no matter what anyone says, there is a method to the madness.
And yes, we will be going through factoring bootcamp too!
Hm, good point, we do have to review union and intersection anyway.