Thursday, August 16, 2007

New Year's Resolution: Just Breathe

Sometime soon I will upload photos of my new classroom, which is huge: 32'x27', with a well-stocked supply room that runs the length of one of the 32' walls. I'm feeling pretty spoiled. We'll see how long that lasts.

To counter that feeling, I spent 4 hours in a scheduling meeting today. This is where we specialists decide which teacher has what special on which day at what time. It's just as much of a pain in the tookas as you might think.

I currently have 22 40-minute classes and 5 30-minute ones for a total of about 600 students, but I spend one morning a week at another school, and I don't know anything about how many class periods or students I will have there. I'm figuring on 4 classes of about 25 for a ballpark, so another 100 kids. I don't know if that's in a classroom or on the cart or what. Planning to call the principal tomorrow.

Fortunately, I got along just fine with the other specialists, especially the music teacher (this is terrific because his classroom is next to mine). I met a bunch of the regular teachers too, and I may even remember a few of them by the time they start bringing me kids in 10 days. That is yet to be seen.

I only spent 7 hours at school today, but that's because they kicked us all out at 4pm. Will spend a few hours there on Tuesday, then have New Teacher Orientation on Weds, Thurs & Fri. I'll have time to work on my room those 3 afternoons, but I'm nowhere near done, and there's no way in hell my classroom will be as ready as I want it to be for the 28th. I just have to breathe and remember that it doesn't need to be perfect.

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