The Unlost Wanderer: My Classroom

These last three weeks sure have been crazy. I received my job, and then everything got crazy. We moved into the apartment about three weeks ago now (it was three weeks Saturday, actually). We spent Saturday moving in and had almost everything unpacked by Sunday. I had Monday and Tuesday to relax, and then the chaos began. I had new teacher orientation that Wednesday and Thursday, and then had my first official day of work on that Friday where the new administration (which is all four of the principals) introduced themselves and we did some team building things.

The whole next week was staff development, which was an over flow of information and stress since HR was behind and I had still yet to sign my contract (which does not happen until Tuesday evening) so I could not log into the computers, check my school email, or anything else that might be necessary in order to properly work. Then, this week was the first week of school.

Now, someone had to move out of my classroom in order for me to move in. He had been in that room about nine years, and was not AT ALL thrilled about moving despite getting put into a better room. So, naturally, he decided to make me miserable about it. So, he took his sweet time moving his things out, meaning I could not start moving anything in until Thursday, as in, about four days before the kids were going to be there for their first day of school. So that Thursday, after he moved out, my room looked like this...

Now, it might look bad, but you should have seen it before he began to move his things out! I was so overwhelmed and had no idea how I was going to get everything done. Luckily, I had a great group of people helping me out! My parents did a lot, and were even gracious enough to buy some things for my classes, and Michael was a huge help. His mom laminated everything for me, since she can do it all herself at her school, and when Michael brought it home the stack looked like this...

It was overwhelming just to look at that stack of stuff! I'm thrilled with all of the owls and everything, but I had no idea how I was possibly going to get it all cut out in time for me to get it all on the walls. Luckily I had a great helper and breaks during staff development to do some cutting. Then, they were kind enough to give us the Friday before school started as a "work day" which mostly meant that I worked on my room all day so that I could get plenty done and would not have to spend my whole weekend at the school finishing up. In the end, I am thrilled with the way that it looks...

I decided on the owl theme when I went to Mardel and saw all the great things they had, and then decided to go with the fall colors since they are pretty gender neutral. The kids keep talking about the owls and how they're cute, so I would say they're a success! With having 7th grade, I was a bit worried it would be too young, but that does not seem to be the case.