A Little Overwhelmed

Today I went to my new Elementary School to pick up some curriculum binders from my new team leader. Sounds innocent right? Well actually receiving the binders was the easy part. We also sat down and talked about curriculum and what the day would look like, and for the very first time, (not the last I'm positive)I started to feel what it must feel like to be a first year teacher. The worst part was we only discussed math today...

One thing that I think may make first year teaching difficult this far is the fact that when we are doing our student teaching, we get accustomed to the way put mentors run their classroom. Not to mention we have so much guidance from our teaching programs, mentors, supervisors, etc. Also for me it feels a little more difficult because I'm teaching in a completely different district.

However, on a positive note I will say that at least I'm in the same state and same grade in which I did my student teaching. There are commonalities between curriculum so that's one thing I will be thankful for this year.

One question I have for you veteran teachers is do any of you use centers in math in the intermediate grades? If you do what do you use for centers? I'll take any suggestions to use as a springboard :)

P.S. I know I'm nuts for starting so early.