Back to School

Yesterday I went back to school to check out my classroom. I have moved from the second to the third floor and all of my educational belongings were in boxes--about 15-20 good sized boxes. I worked for about an hour in the morning and then came back with Cassie in tow. We worked like maniacs for over 5 hours. It is amazing how many things I have accumulated over 2 years of being in the other room. It was kind of nice to get rid of items when I was packing up in June, but a daunting task when unpacking in a new classroom.

We got all the boxes unpacked. Cassie organized my classroom library bins, and organized my storage closet while I cleaned out a storage cabinet and put my things away. Then we had the trying task of figuring out how to organize seating. Our intermediate (grades 3-5) classrooms at River are small (we've counted ceiling tiles--it's 11 (2ft? tiles) going across the width and 7 (3ft. going longways--roughly 22x21 or 462sq feet) The school was built in the 1920's when students sat in rows of tiny desks and not much else went on in the classroom. Take out 2 feet from 3 walls for cubbies and computer tables and built in shelves for our class library and you have about 340 sq feet. Put in a u-shaped reading table that takes up another 18 sq ft. Now divide that by 27 students and 1 teacher and each person has about 10sqft. which includes their desk or table space. This issue isn't a problem in our primary classrooms because they are larger, and the students are smaller. Go figure...

Hunger finally got the best of us a little after 7pm and we trekked off to Hibachi Sushi. At least it was a productive day. I will have to go back at least two days next week prior to the start of school on September 2nd.