Classroom setup

I have this cavernous room. It must be the size of two regular classrooms put together, with no obvious signs that it is anything but one classroom. No windows, but I do have three Macs that are my own classroom's. No sharing here. And I get issued a Mac laptop that has wireless internet. How awesome is that?

Today was our first day to set up the classroom in preparation for the kids coming in on Monday. I was issued tables and chairs and not those one piece desks--thank goodness! My kids sit on the one side and my desk is way on the other side with a big gap of floorspace in the middle, another way for me to make sure I get out from behind my desk because there is no way I could teach from behind it. Gotta get out amidst the kids. The overhead sits right in the middle of them so I am surrounded, right in the thick of things.

So I spent the day doing that stuff. Still have to finish my syllabus and classroom expectations and those little things. Now I have to figure out what sort of unit to teach first. I am thinking of hitting the ground running with my business product unit. Group the kids together, have them create a product of some kind, then structure writing activities around it. Good way to show them where they need to work before getting into grammar specifics. I make them write me, the Bank of Butcher, a perfect business letter. If it isn't perfect, they have to keep doing it until it is. The Bank wouldn't give out money to a company that couldn't write a simple business letter, would they?

It's funny, one of the other teachers wanted to look over my class rosters to see who I had. I don't really like hearing the negative things about some kids but you just have to sometimes to prepare your seating chart and to be watchful. He said one of the girls to look out for was a "Glue Potter." The Glue Pot is a restaurant on Front Street. When the principal took my family around briefly, he said the Glue Pot was where all the "ne'er-do-wells" hang out (his word). That is apparently some kind of clique for a bit lower class. I will have to investigate.

Oh, and then I came home and found the last of our boxes shipped by the US Mail. I swear that they must dunk them in a puddle and then kick them around the room before while they're in transit. These brand new boxes that I got at the UPS Store in Silverdale, WA, must have no tensile strength left. They are week and can barely balance on two on top of each other any more. One box of videos and DVDs sent by media mail was completely ripped open. I am surprised that they are still in there. Amy put some dried milk in one of the boxes and one of the packages broke open. There is milk dust all over a few things.

The TV came! Hooray but boo at the same time. We had insured it so that it would get here in one piece. Well, it sort of got here in one piece. The front of the plastic was cracked a bit. And now the color is a little goofy ( a lot of green, for some reason). It's all right, at least the built in DVD and VHS still work. A little 19 inch TV here costs over $200. This is our 32 inch. And we can't get the insurance we realize now because we do not have the original receipt of the TV (it's over a year old--do you save those receipts?). I wish they had told me that before I spent the $11 on insurance. But if I hadn't insured it, I bet anything that it would have come just torn to pieces.

Now I have to get to work on my classroom stuff. And my Masters classes papers are due this weekend. At least it is a good busy.