My Classroom

Okay, so I'm super excited that I've got a teaching job and I'm oober excited that I'll be teaching at Geneva and I'm beyond stoked that my teacher retired and left me EVERYTHING. Okay, people who aren't teachers don't realize what I mean when I say everything. Most people ask, "Like what? She left you crayons?" Well, as a matter of fact, crayons are about the only thing that she didn't leave me. Oh my gosh, it takes so much money to get everything you need for a classroom. I can't even explain everything she left me, but I'll try.

First of all, she saved her legislative money (you get a piddly amount of money every year from the government) for years to work up to buy a t.v. with DVD and VCR in it. Yeah, she left that for me. She left a bunch of bulletin board borders and posters and a word wall (sight words that the kids are supposed to work on). The bulletin board borders I'm not going to use this year, but they'll come in handy down the road, I know they will. BOOKS!!!!! Oh, do you have any idea how long it takes to build up your own class library? Years. But no, I've got so many books, it's delicious. Not only books for the kids to read, but books for them to listen to (meaning books on tape), and resource books that I can go to for ideas, and resource books as in old text books that the school doesn't use any more but that still have excellent stories in them. She's worked on making poem posters that the kids can read as a center activity and she left me all of those on hangers and a hanger rack. There is so much paper in the closet (ooh, speaking of which, I haven't even had a chance to look in the closet much, gotta put that on my list of things to do soon), and pencil boxes for all the kids, and I really do have to look at what else because that closet is loaded to the max. There's art supplies in the back cabinet with paint and glitter and cotton balls, q-tips, pipe cleaners, etc. Shells, fossils, and rocks under the sink. Plastic and ziploc and paper bags in the draw. So many dry erase markers and erasers that I won't have to buy any of those for a while, even though teachers go through them like no other. A big comfy teacher chair, post-it notes, note cards, paper clips, rubber bands, staples, oooh, three electric pencil sharpeners that would have cost me at least $55 each. Oh, it's so much stuff. There's games that she's made over the years, and pattern blocks and math manipulatives (anything hands on that help the kids do math) and card games and flash cards.

I've been in my classroom now twice (since it became my actual classroom, not Mrs. Browne's). The first time I went and I spent about 3 1/2 hours there and only managed to go through about a third of the classroom. The second time I went it was just a short 1 1/2 trip and all I managed to do was organize the back closet area that contains books and videos (oh, those are something I forgot to mention) and then I went through one cabinet that had literacy stuff in it. I'm waiting now for them to clean the classroom so that I can work on the other half of the room, and I just reminded myself that I still have the closet to attack. And then I'll have to go through the filing cabinets. She has two large filing cabinets FULL of lesson ideas and art projects and I don't know what else. Do you see now that when I say EVERYTHING, I mean so much more than crayons? Oh, and there's also a couple of personal CD players and Walkmans for the kids so that they can listen to the books on tape and on CD. And personal white boards, and aaaahhhhh so much! Can you tell I'm ecstatic?

Yeah, and so the part that I have to cover is the classroom theme and decorations. I could go with a theme that she already had stuff for, but I'm choosing other wise. I want it to feel like my classroom, and not like I stole everything. So, my theme is the rain forest. I'm still working on exactly how my classroom will look, and once I get that figured out and fall into a little bit of money, I'll start shopping for the stuff and putting up the decorations.

This is what I'm thinking so far with the decorations and themes. The word wall is going to be a word waterfall. So the bulletin board is going to look like a waterfall and then after I introduce the words and have the students work with them, we'll put them up there (on raindrops?). Outside of the classroom where student work is displayed, the sign will say "high flying work" and will have a toucan. Inside the classroom, exemplary work will go on a bulletin that says "I spotted good work" and will have a jaguar. The book area will have a snake saying "sssssslip into a good book." The student jobs will have poison dart frogs that say "hopping into help." I think that's all I've got so far. I'm debating if I should do some vines hanging from the ceiling, but my initial thought was to hang some shimmery blue streamer stuff so it looks like it's actually raining in the classroom (thanks to Disneyland's It's a Small World for that idea), and I'm pretty sure I'm leaning more toward that idea than the branches. Oh, and I want to get an orchid to put on my desk.

Shoot, I've got to start putting as much time and energy into my curriculum planning as I am into my decorating. That's already on my list of things to do, so I'll get on it.

If you've got ideas for me about the rain forest, feel free to comment, I would love input :o)