First Week of School

Well, my school year is off to a good start. For those of you who may not be aware, I work at La Europa Academy, which is a residential treatment center for troubled teenage girls. I just started my second year of teaching here.
I have discovered that my Mondays and Wednesdays are going to be my easier days, at least prep wise. I don't have any lessons to prepare, because I have three periods of students who are working independently. The first two periods are both Pre-Calculus, which they do independently online. I'm there to monitor their progress and answer any questions that come up (my favorite part - I'd be happy to do that all period), but there are usually lulls when I can work on other things. The last period, which I have every day, is made up of four students working independently on Algebra, Geometry, Pre-Calculus, and Consumer Math.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I teach Algebra 2 and Geometry (so basically, it's a normal teaching day). I'm looking forward to teaching these classes for the second time. But I'm going to change a few things. I'm planning on doing more games and projects, as well as play around with some of the content (the order I teach it in, the amount of time I spend on different subjects, etc.). So I'll still need lots of prep time, but definately less than last year.
I got to ease into the school year by only teaching Mon-Wed. This is because we had a Parent Weekend the past week. This means that parents fly in from all over the country to visit their girls. I had parent-teacher conferences on Thursday morning (which were a lot slower than normal; I had 20 min breaks at times, so I watched episodes of Avonlea on You Tube - who remembers that show?), and then I didn't have to work Thursday afternoon or Friday. It was very nice. So instead of having a three day weekend, I kind of had a four-and-a-half day weekend. :)
I started out Algebra 2 with a game to help them review Algebra 1 concepts. I wanted to get a good idea of where the class was as a whole, to see how much time I needed to spend reviewing before moving on to new concepts. I discovered that the majority of the class needs a good week or two of review.
My Geometry class started out with a mini research project. They could choose to research plants, animals, or something cultural in or out of the United States. They had to do a short write-up about the history of the object, the symmetries within it, and the geometric shapes it contained. I hope it was something fun that helped them to see the big picture of how geometry is all around us, before we get down to the nitty gritty of learning a bajillion terms (which is what the majority of the first term is).
So, in short, the school year is off to a good start.