I Got In

I went into my new classroom for the first time today. I found out that they are tearing up the office and putting it back together and in the meantime, the school's secretary and computer clerk are operating out of my classroom. They apologized for being in my room but I told them as long as I didn't bother them, they wouldn't bother me.

I was able to bring all the boxes of school stuff into my classroom, although the teacher moving out of the room still has some stuff to move and since I'm temporarily sharing my room, it's a little hard to figure out where I'm going to put anything yet. I was able to pull my car up right to the outside door of my classroom, which was really nice. I took some things out of boxes, put my in/out boxes on my desk, and mostly just stood around staring at the room trying to figure out where to begin.

I probably won't move any furniture to where I want it to go until I have the room to myself. I'm hoping to go back in tomorrow and sketch out where I want stuff to go. I still can't decide how I want to arrange the students' desks. A horseshoe, long tables, and groups of 3-4 desks together all sound equally good. I have a fear that I will have to physically place the desks in each arrangement to really decide what I want. Tomorrow I'll also take my stapler with me and start hanging up colored paper over the bulletin boards. I need to get some sticky-tack and yarn so I can hang up some of my posters.

I will also be hitting the dollar store this week looking for some plastic bins to organize teaching materials and stuff. I'm really trying not to spend a ton of money on my new classroom but there are certain things that will improve the quality of my life that are hard to resist, like this chair, even though I'm way too broke. Maybe next month I'll have to break down and buy it. I also need a comfy office chair. My chair right now is a blue, plastic student chair with casters. It doesn't exactly look inviting.

I also need to start a home-away-from-home drawer in my room where I can keep an extra supply of pantyhose, deodorant (for those mornings when I only remember to apply deodorant to one side, it's happened before), a sweater, breath mints, and a healthy supply of chocolate.

As I was getting ready to leave the school, I ran into another 4th grade teacher. She is amazingly helpful and has been emailing me back and forth throughout the summer. She gave me a tour of the school and introduced me to some of the other teachers. Everyone was very friendly. I was surprised by how small the school is after walking through the halls. One nice thing about 4th grade is we are the only grade in our hall. We are next to the library and computer lab, which is very convenient, and makes for a peaceful hallway. I also got to see the workroom where all the supplies are stored. Raiding that is on tomorrow's agenda as well!