Day One

It's finally here! After all of the anticipation, training, and unpaid hours, I finally began work at my new school officially today.

I had not been in to the building in almost two weeks because of my trip and the floors on our hall being waxed. That second part should have prepared me for the state of my room when I entered this morning, but it did not. All of the hard work I had done arranging things, putting my classroom library together, etc. had been undone, and everything was strewn about on top of every available surface. Joy. So, most of the morning was spent redoing what I'd already done and rethinking the arrangement of things due to new additions to the room's fixins.

Around mid-day one of my teammates brought me my crack. AKA, my roll for my new class. I officially have 19 brand-new bundles of third grade joy. I have 8 boys and 11 girls. Two members of the class have first names I cannot begin to pronounce, and I'm on the fence about the pronunciation of about 4 more. (What happened to naming your kid something straightforward?)

Anyway, I am so excited to begin the process of putting students' names on everything, as well as finalizing the arrangement of the room and making everything just so. Then there's the whole planning aspect because, let's face it, I am going to have to teach them something - just making cute sh*t for the walls doesn't really cut it. My plan is to get my room in pristine shape ASAP and then spend the rest of the week I have before they get here (and, let's be honest, probably most of the weekend) focusing on the planning portion.

I am really happy that we will have an open house before school starts, so I get a chance to meet the students and parents before the chaos of the first day. With this being a new school, I feel like the chaos factor is going to be exponentially greater than the normal hair-tearing, teeth-gnashing, headache-inducing level of mayhem that marks the beginning of an elementary school year.

Anyway, I left right at 3:45 today (for the last time in nine months, in all likelihood) because my old friend Bryan the Orkin man was due at my house for our routine maintenance. Good news, folks! Bryan said we should not expect anymore rodent visitors, as all of the ginormous amount of poison he put downstairs in the basement had been eaten. Hooray for small victories and happy Wednesday.