Day 1

It's here - a new school year. I had a fabulous 2 1/2 weeks off and I was excited to show up at school this morning. Case in point: I normally get up at 6 am on weekdays and so our cat has gotten in the habit of eating at that hour. Subsequently, she meows for breakfast right around 6 am no matter what day of the week it is. Today, I didn't have to be at school until 8:30 so I was going to "sleep in" until 7 am. She meowed at 6:02, I stumbled into the guest bath to feed her and then planned on going back to sleep for another hour. Didn't happen. Usually I'm the queen of the snooze button but I laid awake until 6:30 thinking about everything I knew I was going to need to do and then finally just said forget it and got up.

You never really know what you're walking into on the first day of a new school year. Last year, I had no idea where my classroom even was when I walked in that first day. This year, I knew where it was and I had moved almost all of my stuff to my new "cottage" but I left it with extra furniture, plus a colleague's things whose new "cottage" wasn't ready yet. I had expected these things to be remedied before I got there today - furniture moved, stuff moved.

Yeah, that hadn't happened. The carpet cleaning that has been supposedly happening for the last 5 months hadn't happened yet either.  But they had cleaned the floors, which meant all the stuff I had so neatly stacked was just everywhere. Ah, such is the life of a teacher - things never happen the way they're supposed to, especially in a public school.

So, after a morning cutting out letters for my new Boggle bulletin board (idea from here - she has a free printable download, which is fabulous) and helping a colleague re-do one of her bulletin boards we got to work moving furniture. There were at least 8-10 pieces of extra furniture in my room including several file cabinets, a large metal wardrobe, book shelves, and chairs that are too small for my students. It was hot - thank goodness we swiped the hand truck temporarily from the custodian's storage space (he didn't mind).

So, add a new title to my ever-growing list of ones as a teacher: furniture mover. Except for the big metal wardrobe because it was too heavy and large for me and my fellow teacher to move, it's all in the cottage next door which is currently being used as storage. I was then able to set up my desks, put up two bulletin boards (my CAFE board for the Daily 5 and the beginnings of the Boggle board), and generally just got stuff to where I think it wants to live. Compared to when I walked in at 8:30 this morning, it's 1000 times better. I have a long way to go but I know what needs to be done.

Have I mentioned I am rocking some good old-fashioned wood paneling in my new digs? It's very 1970s. I went to Home Depot after school to look for the shelving brackets that I need for one of my built-in bookshelves and they didn't carry it - too old! I'm considering a lava lamp to spice things up and just keep the whole retro feeling going.

So, day 1 was not what I had wanted but that's generally the way it goes. Tomorrow will be better, especially if I can get that last piece of furniture moved out and the reading table I need moved in.  Oh, and get the computer tables I need. Thankfully, I am getting FIVE computers that are newish (from the media center because they're getting the ones from the computer lab, which is getting all new ones), which I am so thankful for. I had four last year, which was a stretch with 28 kids. I also need to get the mobile Smartboard from the media center and figure out how that's going to work. My previous classroom had a permanent one installed.

One last great thing that happened today: I, as of now, only have 23 students! It may not seem that different from my 28 lovelies last year but it's an entire group of desks. Five fewer of everything to grade. I don't need extra pockets on my huge pocket chart where the kids turn in work. I think I'm going to think people are missing for the first few weeks because I'm so used to 28.