I spent my first day in my new classroom today! I didn't get that much done. Mainly, I inventorized everything to figure out what I have and what I still need to get, and then I set up the desks, and thats pretty much it.
Here are some verdicts:
1. The room is actually pretty dang big when you only have 20 desks to take up room. Once I set up the desks, I still had a good quarter of the room with completely empty space. I am going to be able to set up a teacher's table for small groups, and a nice little library area. I am very pleased with this
2. I have more storage space than I thought. When I first saw the room, my first thought was "Oh no, there is like no storage space" because I was comparing it to my resident teacher's classroom from when I student taught. In comparison, there is like NO storage space. Here's the deal though. I have no things. So the "little" storage space I have is going to be standing pretty empty for a looooong time :-P
3. The amount of bulletin board I have to decorate is freaking me out! I measured dimensions, and I have 70 feet of bulletin board to fill up. HOLY SMOKES!!!! I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. On the other hand, once I finally get that done, its going to be really nice.
4. Nothing is magnetic in my room! One teensy tiny filing cabinet and that is it. Not even the whiteboard is magnetic. I honestly couldn't believe it. I stuck a magnet on it, and stared dumbfounded as it dropped to the floor. Lol, never in my life have I seen a whiteboard that isn't magnetic.
Anyways, here are some "Before" pictures!
This is the view, slightly to the left, from the door. I like the white bulletin boards (it brightens up the room since the walls are dark brown) but the orange has got to go! I do not like the color orange, so its just not working for me.
Our school theme is Mystery/Investigation, i.e. Sherlock Holmes/FBI/etc. so really I should be going with black or something. But I don't care. I am going with bright lime green, and I don't care that it doesn't really work with the theme! I love bright lime green :-)
Back of the classroom. The cloth covers up a mini refrigerator and microwave, and a piece of plywood that was used to connect the two drawers. I am going to try to find a cuter cloth to cover it up, because the burlap isn't working for me.
Also, I love the yellow bulletin board behind my desk. Which is funny, because I usually don't like the color yellow. It is definitely staying.
See that tangle of cables on that table. Yeah...that took me 45 minutes to untangle. It was bad. This table was designed to hold the projector, but you have to place it in the middle of the room and it takes up a ton of space. So I squished everything onto a desk instead, and will be using the table as a group table.
I love that the desks are pretty small. It makes the room seem so much bigger once I set everything up in table groups. However, I do not love that all of the desks are different heights. I am not OCD, but that was really bugging me. Oh well, nothing that can be done. I currently have 16 desks in the class, so I need 3 to 4 more.
Also visible in this picture is the huge amount of chapter books that were left for me. I also got donated a ton of books by a teacher moving on to be a vice principal, so my class library is going to be quite sizable for a first year teacher! Yay!
Ok well, those were the "Before" pictures! Hopefully, I will have a blog post in the next month with the "After" pictures. I am not a good organizer OR a good decorator, so I am a bit overwhelmed, but hopefully it is going to look nice.
Basically, this is my reaction to school right now:
Create curriculum? No problem!
Teach lessons? Totally got it!
Behavior Management? Gonna nail it!
Organize and Decorate the Classroom? AAAAAHHHH I CANT DO THIS! I CAN NEVER BE A TEACHER!
Lol.
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