Tag: classrooms

In which a minor thing goes right

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy, Teaching2 Comments

You may recall I’m working on getting a classroom set up, what with how I haven’t shut up about it for days. What I haven’t mentioned is that I’ve had a couple of Indiana University flags hanging up in virtually every classroom I’ve ever had that had the wall space for them, and I have been tearing the house apart over the last several days trying to figure out where the hell I put them after I closed down my last classroom. There was no way I would ever have thrown them away, and I realized this afternoon that there were certain other objects missing as well– most notably, my collection of Hulk toys, mostly gifts from students– that I similarly would never have gotten rid of.

They had to be in the basement. They had to be. There were other boxes of school shit down there; why wouldn’t the flags be down there somewhere? But both my wife and I had already gone through the basement. Independently. And found nothing.

Our basement is a fucking mess, y’all.

Now, in this picture, you need to ignore the fact that one of the flags in question is on top of the pile, but note that that cardboard box is open. And the reason the flag is on top of the pile of stuff there but with nothing underneath it dislodged is that the motherfucking thing was in plain goddamn sight the entire time, on top of everything in that cardboard box. And yet, somehow, two adults who were looking for red flags didn’t see it.

Trash bags full of undonated baby clothes removed, we see … part of a roll of paper towels, for some reason, part of a car seat, and … wait, what’s that?

If anyone has advice on how to get wrinkles out of a polyester flag, they’d be appreciated. And look! Underneath the flag!

My Hulk toys. My Hulk mugs. My binary clock. My Easy Button. My Skull of An Unnamed Former Student. All the shit that I knew goddamn well I didn’t throw away.

For once, something– a minor something, mind you, but something— has gone right.

Classroom update

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Ain’t panorama mode cool? I didn’t do a ton today, mostly just rearranged desks and got my bulletin boards covered. There’s a banner on that stretch of wall to the extreme left that happened after the picture and you probably can’t see the number line on the far right. Monday I’ll get some stuff on the wall in the back by my desk and quite possibly swap some desks out for a round table, which will fix a lot of the tightness issues, which are mostly on the far side of the room.

Sooner or later I need to think about curriculum, too, but … yeah. Sooner or later. I met several of the teachers on my team today and a few that weren’t, and it was really interesting to me to hear myself swing back and forth from sounding like a burnout to … well, not. But there’s definitely some burnout talk happening. Hoping to get that killed off before school starts. We’ll see. Five more days!

Here we go here we go here we go

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching3 Comments

Spent most of the day in my classroom, alternately rearranging desks and staring at the wall. I ended up taking the second classroom from the earlier post, mostly due to some late-breaking information about occasional temperature problems in the other room. The good news is that the other teacher has moved out of the room; the bad news is that she, uh, took a little bit more of the furniture than I was expecting her to, and one of the things I had to do was email the principal and ask for things like a file cabinet and a teacher desk.

I’m going to end up swapping about a third of the big desks for one-piece arm desks, which I think will end up as a best of both worlds situation in my room– I’ll have mostly the larger desks, which are more comfortable for bigger kids (and bigger teachers) and left-handed kids, and still have some of the smaller one-piece desks that will give me a little bit more room to move around the classroom once there are actual bodies at all of those desks. Right now there’s too many places where not only am I convinced I can’t move around between desks, I’m not sure I can have kids seated at both of them without bumping into each other.

I’ll get it sorted. Once I have I’ll post some pictures.

Oh, and I dropped just under $180 on classroom necessities today, too, without touching things like new clothes (not really an expense I can count, but still) and office supplies– just stuff that I know good and well I’m going to need no matter how I end up laying the room out. I do so love having to spend my own money to get my room set up, guys. It’s awesome.

Anyway. All sorts of family stuff going on tomorrow, which means I won’t have time to be in my classroom, so I’ve got Friday and all of next week to get ready for this. I am surprisingly enthusiastic about it, despite how this post might sound. This is gonna be a good year, dammit, if it kills me.

In which I make decisions

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching3 Comments

So I’m sitting in a classroom in a school right now. I actually have a choice of two rooms, and there’s not a whole lot of difference between them, which naturally makes the choice a whole lot harder.

Room the first!

Both rooms are within a few inches of the same size and have the same stuff in them. The main difference is the windows and the desks– this room has two windows, which means more natural light, which is good, but it lacks the built-in coordinate plane on the board (not necessarily something I need) and it has one-piece desks, which I really don’t like. They won’t be remaining in rows one way or another, but this room is nice and spacious and bright. Right now there’s no teacher desk in here, but they’ll bring one in.

Room two!

Main differences: one window, coordinate plane on board, way way better desks. Problem is the desks are bigger, and when there are kids sitting in them this room is going to be crowded, particularly since I think I’m gonna end up teaching eighth graders. This layout is impossible for me to work with for a number of reasons but I’m not sure how much space I’ll save in the room if I move them around.

Main thing, I suppose, is I need to decide if I’m willing to trade floor space for shitty desks. I think I’ll probably end up going with extra floor space (and, with it, added versatility) but I’m gonna have to think about it a bit.

EDIT: Just before leaving I had a brief conversation with the night engineer, who told me that Room #1 has had issues with HVAC and tends to be too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. I don’t mind too cold at all, but a room that’s overheated may make the decision all by itself. Hmm.

The classroom’s coming along

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching6 Comments

How the hell do I only have one more day until school starts?  Christ.IMG_2843

In previous classrooms the Hulks have lived near or behind my desk.  About 80% of those were gifts from students and a few of them are actually handmade.  We’ll see if I can trust these current classes to not mess with my stuff.  Crossing fingers.

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Bulletin board, front of room, to the right of the whiteboard.  Plan is for the girls to add other professions to the extra space; there’s room to put pictures to the right of the bulletin board.  The mirrors are held on with Velcro.  I’m kinda proud of this one.

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My desk, such as it is.  Note three different computers in use at the same time, which is not atypical.  And one of these days I should probably tell the story of the green thing on the wall back there; I think it might entertain you.

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Data walls, calculators.  Pbbbbbbbbt.

IMG_2844And the rest of the room.  The desks and tables are where I want them but there’s still a lot of organization to be done, as well as at least one more decoration thing that’s going above the whiteboard and will take a couple of hours.

Maybe I can convince the boss to let me come in on Sunday, no one but a teacher ever thought.

Sigh.

Maybe I can do this NO I CAN’T SHUT UP

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching7 Comments

If I were a dog, I would deserve a firm smack on the nose, perhaps with some sort of rolled-up magazine or newspaper, for writing this post.  Then again, if a dog actually wrote a blog post, perhaps that would be cause for celebration and not censure.  Maybe this metaphor doesn’t quite work.  I don’t know.

I spent about an hour this afternoon sitting in my new classroom, just sort of staring at everything.  Have some pictures.  Ignore the clutter and the untidiness; there were parties yesterday and the janitors haven’t gotten everywhere yet (and the teacher did a terrible job of getting the kids to straighten the room.)

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As you can see, the room is cavernous.  It’s set up as a science classroom; there’s storage underneath the countertop all the way around.  That thing in the back is a vent hood.  I can burn shit in there if I want to.

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There’s room for, like, a million kids in here, and tons of table space too.  There’s 30 student desks, plus three round tables, four computer stations that are probably going away, two rectangular tables, a couple of bar stools for the counter space, and a couple of desk areas built in under the windows.  The versatility for seating arrangements is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.  Both of my previous classrooms could fit inside this one at the same time.

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Lots of board space, too.  The whiteboard is electronic, and there’s some chalkboard to either side of it, plus a fair amount of bulletin board space, especially if I get rid of the computer stations, which I’m planning to do.

God help me, I sat in this classroom today and for a couple of minutes I was actually looking forward to this fall. I cannot do this. I cannot allow myself this luxury when I don’t think I’m going to be getting paid for the entire school year.

This year was rough.  I have no reason to think next year was better, as the two cardinal rules of teaching in Indiana are that nothing ever gets better and everything always gets worse.  And “worse” next year is going to be unprecedentedly worse if I can’t get out this summer.

But damn.  This classroom.