Archive for August 18th, 2009

August 17th was our first day of “real” work at my school. We opened up with a meeting of all the teachers and then it was off to the classrooms to work on getting set up.

My situation, as a brand new teacher, was somewhat unique. Everyone else was trying to get all their teaching tools put away, while I was trying to figure out how to set up my room, make a few posters, cover the bulletin boards, and get my class list. My class was empty. I had no last year’s teaching tools to put away.

I felt helpless. Fortunately for me one of the other teachers came to my room, knowing I was new, and announced that she had a huge box of borders which had been left with her by a retiring teaching last spring. I looked through them. I found some borders decorated with globes, some with rainbow pencils, and some with apples and “welcome” spelled out. I could put colored butcher paper over the bulletin boards (a technique I learned from observing the classroom next door) then staple the borders around for an attractive display. I would have two subject-specific word walls and one large bulletin board for student work.

The colored butcher paper comes on huge rolls, like the rolls you see upholstery fabric on, and although there is a mechanism for tearing the paper off, it doesn’t work properly. So, as for the first time ever I tried to tear the roll away, it ripped. It was uneven. I felt foolish.  But I got a large piece of paper and carried it down the hallway.

“That paper looks pretty raggedy,” another teacher teased  me.

“This is just my practice run,” I told him. And in fact, it was. Hanging the paper, I had to learn to use the straight edge along the top, staple it in place, then let the paper hang down the bulletin board, staple that down the sides, work down to the bottom, staple it all, then go around the bulletin board with open scissors like an exacto knife and take off the excess.  When I was done, it was too messy, the paper hadn’t been big enough, I had to do it again.

If I can’t even put up a bulletin board, how am I ever going to teach my class, I wondered as I walked down to get more butcher paper. And will anyone notice that I wasted a whole bunch of paper?

No one noticed. The second time I brought three sheets of paper for the three boards and this time it went much better. I learned you can patch a corner that’s too short by slipping another same-colored piece under it and stapling — you can’t really see the rip. Then once the paper is up, you staple the borders around the edges. I broke a lot of staples doing that because the wood was pretty hard. I got it done. My bulletin boards looked great.

This was only one small battle, of course. I hadn’t yet made the posters, I hadn’t brought the plants I bought in yet, or the notebooks, and it still looked pretty bare. But they told me  my computer would be coming in today. And the posters are almost ready. And I keep telling myself over and over, with all the teachers in this world, all of them who had a first year and a first day in front of their own first class, and who made it, why should I be any different?

I feel like I’m at the edge of a tremendous sea, in a tiny boat, getting ready to embark. That’s an uneasy feeling, but it’s not necessarily a bad one. A lot could happen, and surely will.