First Day In

Today was our first day in at the school where we had several staff meetings, met the returning staff and new staff, and got our teaching assignments. To my surprise (and maybe not so much to my surprise), I am split 50-50 between high school and elementary. I am teaching two high school ESL classes (10 & 11 - one per term) and two computer / media courses (year round), as well as teaching ESL to k-4. Yes, k-4. Does it look like I’m ready to teach k-4??? No ... but I guess i’ll just have to improvise ...

My classrooms aren’t all that organized right now either. The computer lab hasn’t had a techie in it for 8 years and old computers are everywhere. I was down there cleaning today and found a box filled with Apple ][e’s. Like we are talking old computers here. Throw them out everyone says. Well, I’m not allowed to. Apparently because they are a capital expenditure, we have to hold onto them until they have been amortized out. Uh .... I think a computer bought in the early 80’s has been amortized out by now. They don’t work, they will never work again, and you can’t really do anything on them except for type (and that’s only on those that even work). So, I’m in the process of moving them all out of my lab and into a corner of another class room as I have to make room for the old PC’s that I’m taking off of the pods and replacing them with the iMac’s.

My upstairs classroom is starting to come along.. got all of the old stuff out of it and made my bulletin boards all pretty :-) . Now all I have to do is figure out how to organize a classroom for k-4 and 10/11 .. this is the task now.