Laminating my Life

School starts on Monday, and I feel nowhere near ready. My room is still chaos… it looks like a tornado hit it! There are still three large aquariums I need to figure out where to put and what to do with them…the boxed dead dissection rats, and paper, packets I need to sort. I also need to clean the back of the classroom and put the desks where I want them…the trouble is my room is so awkwardly shaped, things have to go in weird places to fit right. Like the computer being right in front of  the good grease board and the projector being in front of the crappy one…which is really just the back part of a shower screwed into the wall.

My lesson plans are taking a long time to write too. How much time for activities is too much time? How do I make an assignment challenging enough to keep them focused but not make it so difficult as to lose them completely? I want them to learn something, and enjoy learning it! I hope that they take something away with them that they can use in their daily lives or own creativity. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, not just because they have to learn it because they have to be tested on it… or have to chunk it the night before so they can remember just enough to sweep by on an exam.

My biology class is the smallest class I have with only 7 students. Seems like cake right? But they’re the most advanced learners I’ll have…and the only subject that I really teach on my own…and it’s MY subject…MY thing…MY baby! I want to make it exciting. ALL of it! But I have to figure out how I want to teach each unit in that many sections…. For example…the first unit for bio on the online lessons we have say it should talk 4 days to complete…which is exactly how long the unit is…which would be fine if it wasn’t the first day of school and the kids are learning all the rules, expectations, procedures, how to find the classroom, what supplies we have available, how to put together their notebooks…that part will take about 2 days…and then I have 4 days of information to put into to…but I want to take them apart and have them be even more exciting…

I am so scared.

I will probably be at the school all weekend long as long as possible to finish everything up before I cry alone in the teachers’ lounge on the first day of school.

OH but I am learning so much, I really am! There is so much about being a teacher that I didn’t know.

1.       Put your name on EVERYTHING

2.       Laminate EVERYTHING

3.       The lamination machine is the coolest machine ever

4.       Stealing is okay…and sometimes encouraged

5.       Learning to speak to your peers by their last name…and introducing yourself to others by YOUR last name is tough  

Cleaning and Rat Traps

Slowly cleaning up my room this week! I need to buy some raid to spray on the floor to try and get rid of some of the mouse. I also put up a clock (that shows humidity and temperature) and boarders around a white board today.

I also met some of the custodians and got to chat with them today. They’re really nice! One of them was super helpful asking me if I needed anything and never to hesitate to ask if I needed help or who to ask for certain things. Yay, he’s replacing the burnt out fluorescents for me so my room won’t be so dark!

Though cleaning my room today, I saw this weird black plastic thing in the floor in my room…It looked like the size of a license plate and wondered if something fell from the counter of ceiling or something. Anyway, I leaned down to pick it up…and the edge of it stuck to my finger…hard. I screamed and shook my hand vigorously before it eventually fell back on the floor. It was a rat trap with an extremely sticky side.  Haha. I can still hear them crawling around the walls...I want to pretend their just ghosts...why does that seem less creepy?

I also ordered a skeleton for my room today. Mr. Bones should be on his way. I need to find some fun sunglasses for him to wear… or a fun wig. I kinda want to decorate him during holidays…like with a Santa hat  :?

Lots of training this week for science. I’m learning a lot…but still freaking out. Especially learning about what supplies we can require for them and what we can’t. Also, how much paper we can use per semester…which isn’t a lot, and what book recourses we have… which is few and outdated. The bio book we use is the same one I used in high school. Lots of research to do.