Reading Area #1:
Newly-created Reading Area #2:
I swear I have space in my classroom for doing actual work.
Showing posts with label rooms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rooms. Show all posts
Thursday, June 21, 2007
the best feeling in the world
An age ago, when I was still in school, I would walk across campus sometimes, and something about the way the breeze would rustle in the trees, or a bit of conversation I would overhear, would fill me with this almost inexpressable joy, a feeling that surprised me at first in how it really is a swelling in the chest, and I would think to myself, "I am really, really happy here." That feeling was gone for a long time when I left. And now, just as suddenly, it's back. It's seven p.m., and I'm sitting in my warm, colorful classroom, reading my ESL students' essays on Romeo and Juliet. This is going to sound like bragging, but I have to say, they are blowing me away. They have really, really learned something this year, and they are honest-to-god ready to move on to mainstream English. And as for me - I, for the very first time, know what it feels like to be successful at teaching. It is the swelling/bursting feeling again, the feeling like I am in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing.
Reading Area #1:
Newly-created Reading Area #2:
I swear I have space in my classroom for doing actual work.
Reading Area #1:
Newly-created Reading Area #2:
I swear I have space in my classroom for doing actual work.
Friday, June 08, 2007
fire-extinguished!
The Universe, it seems, was unsatisfied with last week's minor respiratory disaster, my walking out of my classroom and into a cloud of mere pepper spray. This morning, the ante was succesfully upped when I was summonsed to sub during my conference for DR, my most ideological opposite in the English department and luckily, my SLC-mate and four-doors-down neighbor. I am sick once again today, with my throat swollen almost shut this morning and having spent all last night shaking with cold and fever, but much as I wanted to spend the period asleep on my couch, I signed the damn paper and headed over there fourth period, and was rewarded with a faceful of freshly-sprayed fire-extinguishing chemical dust.
Working here has made everything normal. I thought, "Hmm. Should probably document," reached into my bag, and pulled out my digi-cam. Then, covered face and opened windows, took kids waiting on balcony to my room where I supplied them with markers and a small stack of books on tagging, called the front office, and texted everyone I know to let them in on the story. DR is pretty universally loathed; I knew it would be the pick-me-up everyone needed on a dull, plodding Friday like today.
At this rate, I fully expect to be mustard-gassed by the end of the school year.
Working here has made everything normal. I thought, "Hmm. Should probably document," reached into my bag, and pulled out my digi-cam. Then, covered face and opened windows, took kids waiting on balcony to my room where I supplied them with markers and a small stack of books on tagging, called the front office, and texted everyone I know to let them in on the story. DR is pretty universally loathed; I knew it would be the pick-me-up everyone needed on a dull, plodding Friday like today.
At this rate, I fully expect to be mustard-gassed by the end of the school year.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
mmmm. peppery.
Highlights of my day:
I breathed pepper spray for the first time! And it wasn’t even a fight, just some kids goofing around in the hallway connecting my classroom to the rest of the school (naturally.) I stepped in to head to the restroom and got a lungful. It’s like the first time you’re in an earthquake; despite your lack of prior experience, you immediately know exactly what is going on. It really feels like pepper, if that makes sense, and then your eyes water, and you cough violently, and later you get a headache. Or maybe that’s from the graffiti remover I used this morning – who can really say.
One of the other SLC’s leads is attempting to take a room in our rotation. This is incredibly freaking unacceptable. I am hoping it is resolved before I have to scream and yell about it.
Highlights from ESL 4 translations of Romeo and Juliet:
SAMPSON: No, sir, I do not talk smack at you, sir, but I do talk smack, sir.
ROMEO: Is she a Capulet? Oh dear, my life is a mess.
I breathed pepper spray for the first time! And it wasn’t even a fight, just some kids goofing around in the hallway connecting my classroom to the rest of the school (naturally.) I stepped in to head to the restroom and got a lungful. It’s like the first time you’re in an earthquake; despite your lack of prior experience, you immediately know exactly what is going on. It really feels like pepper, if that makes sense, and then your eyes water, and you cough violently, and later you get a headache. Or maybe that’s from the graffiti remover I used this morning – who can really say.
One of the other SLC’s leads is attempting to take a room in our rotation. This is incredibly freaking unacceptable. I am hoping it is resolved before I have to scream and yell about it.
Highlights from ESL 4 translations of Romeo and Juliet:
SAMPSON: No, sir, I do not talk smack at you, sir, but I do talk smack, sir.
ROMEO: Is she a Capulet? Oh dear, my life is a mess.
Friday, January 19, 2007
the furniture wars
First and foremost: I'm alive!
That much was probably obvious. Less obvious has been that I'm still teaching. In fact, I'm teaching the perfect tenses right now, and Greek mythology, and how to craft a strong thesis and write a timed essay in under 40 minutes. So I'm doing all types of real teaching, as opposed to the BS-y fake teaching I did last year. This is not to say that I'm doing any of it well, but they say that comes in the third year.
The big drama at work is furniture-centric right now. It's sparked hours of ranting and raving, so I'll try to pare down to the bare minimum here. What you need to know is: our desks suck, and they suck hard. So, the five of us in the farthest-back rooms have fought and wheedled and coerced and gotten tables for most of our rooms, which rule.
About a week before the winter mini-break, we get this memo saying we are getting BRAND NEW DESKS AND CHAIRS for students and teachers and every single room that coming Wednesday!
Pause right here and remember that my school holds about 3600 students at any given time. How many desks and chairs is that, to move in one day?
So they give us these little paper signs, about five flourescent orange reading REMOVE and five flourescent pink reading DO NOT REMOVE. They are only for student and teacher desks as - this will become important - nothing else is to be removed at this time. I take it upon myself to coordinate the five rooms and make sure everything is labeled how it needs to be; this takes about half a day with all the attendant copying, taping, and phoning of off-track people, as we rotate these rooms in "pods" of three teachers for any given pair of rooms. This makes sense in a track-school kind of way and someday, if you are very lucky, I will explain it.
All through break I can't sleep for these vivid and recurring nightmares that I will come back to my room and it will be empty, or that my huge beautiful library tables will have been traded in for cheapie uncomfortable desks. When we come back and I find my room untouched, I am hugely relieved. Riley's room, next door, is a little different. They've taken out her 40 student desks and replaced them with 30 new ones. They've left her teachers' desk, as requested, but they have also put in a new teacher's desk, upside down, next to it. She puts in a maintenance request, but nobody comes for it.
Cool.
A week later, Friday afternoon, and we're still in our rooms at 5:00 for some god-unknown reason. Good thing, because some dude in a coverall sticks his head in and is like, "I'm here about the new furniture?"
Whaaa?
So we are insistent. We DO NOT want new furniture. We watch as he writes DO NOT REMOVE EXISTING FURNITURE in caps all across the instructions on the door. As an added precaution, I leave Mr. Junior Bacon Cheeseburger with what I hope is the cheerful but stern message, "Thank you for NOT removing my tables!" We leave feeling fairly secure that our directions are clear.
Come Tuesday, we enter through my room, where everything is still aces. Riley's room, however, now contains 40 student desks, her old teacher desk, her new upside-down teacher desk, and still a third teacher desk, shoved into the back corner of the room, blocking the fridge, microwave, and door into my room. Mysteriously missing is this amazing wooden table that I swore on several holy books that I would protect as it belonged to our insane dean. This is another story, and a pretty good one at that, but just now the (table-shaped) hole in my heart is too fresh a wound. I have been in alternate stages of denial and rage about it all week. That was my perch, man. My perch.
Riley is more or less just livid. We spend half an hour before school moving seven student desks and one teacher desk outside. The other one is too deep in the room, and too heavy to turn right-side-up. We throw a tablecloth over it, and it slumbers there still. She makes another maintenance request. From this we learn:
-Maintenance is angry that the new desks are outside, regardless of the fact that her room was so crowded we physically could not move around.
-We had been scheduled, all along, to receive our new furniture in this second wave. This second wave that not one teacher in the entire school was informed of.
-Riley's first set of new desks, then, was not actually supposed to be hers. It was in her room as "storage," despite the fact that her room is clearly in use, and that we are literally next door to a completely empty, abandoned wood shop.
-When they came the second week, they did not just add 10 desks. They took out the 30 desks "stored" in her room and put in 40 brand-new ones.
-My perch has been taken to salvage.
-As we were told all furniture taken from those rooms went to salvage, we can only assume this includes the 30 week-old desks that were removed to make way for this fresh batch.
Mr. JBC says:
That much was probably obvious. Less obvious has been that I'm still teaching. In fact, I'm teaching the perfect tenses right now, and Greek mythology, and how to craft a strong thesis and write a timed essay in under 40 minutes. So I'm doing all types of real teaching, as opposed to the BS-y fake teaching I did last year. This is not to say that I'm doing any of it well, but they say that comes in the third year.
The big drama at work is furniture-centric right now. It's sparked hours of ranting and raving, so I'll try to pare down to the bare minimum here. What you need to know is: our desks suck, and they suck hard. So, the five of us in the farthest-back rooms have fought and wheedled and coerced and gotten tables for most of our rooms, which rule.
About a week before the winter mini-break, we get this memo saying we are getting BRAND NEW DESKS AND CHAIRS for students and teachers and every single room that coming Wednesday!
Pause right here and remember that my school holds about 3600 students at any given time. How many desks and chairs is that, to move in one day?
So they give us these little paper signs, about five flourescent orange reading REMOVE and five flourescent pink reading DO NOT REMOVE. They are only for student and teacher desks as - this will become important - nothing else is to be removed at this time. I take it upon myself to coordinate the five rooms and make sure everything is labeled how it needs to be; this takes about half a day with all the attendant copying, taping, and phoning of off-track people, as we rotate these rooms in "pods" of three teachers for any given pair of rooms. This makes sense in a track-school kind of way and someday, if you are very lucky, I will explain it.
All through break I can't sleep for these vivid and recurring nightmares that I will come back to my room and it will be empty, or that my huge beautiful library tables will have been traded in for cheapie uncomfortable desks. When we come back and I find my room untouched, I am hugely relieved. Riley's room, next door, is a little different. They've taken out her 40 student desks and replaced them with 30 new ones. They've left her teachers' desk, as requested, but they have also put in a new teacher's desk, upside down, next to it. She puts in a maintenance request, but nobody comes for it.
Cool.
A week later, Friday afternoon, and we're still in our rooms at 5:00 for some god-unknown reason. Good thing, because some dude in a coverall sticks his head in and is like, "I'm here about the new furniture?"
Whaaa?
So we are insistent. We DO NOT want new furniture. We watch as he writes DO NOT REMOVE EXISTING FURNITURE in caps all across the instructions on the door. As an added precaution, I leave Mr. Junior Bacon Cheeseburger with what I hope is the cheerful but stern message, "Thank you for NOT removing my tables!" We leave feeling fairly secure that our directions are clear.
Come Tuesday, we enter through my room, where everything is still aces. Riley's room, however, now contains 40 student desks, her old teacher desk, her new upside-down teacher desk, and still a third teacher desk, shoved into the back corner of the room, blocking the fridge, microwave, and door into my room. Mysteriously missing is this amazing wooden table that I swore on several holy books that I would protect as it belonged to our insane dean. This is another story, and a pretty good one at that, but just now the (table-shaped) hole in my heart is too fresh a wound. I have been in alternate stages of denial and rage about it all week. That was my perch, man. My perch.
Riley is more or less just livid. We spend half an hour before school moving seven student desks and one teacher desk outside. The other one is too deep in the room, and too heavy to turn right-side-up. We throw a tablecloth over it, and it slumbers there still. She makes another maintenance request. From this we learn:
-Maintenance is angry that the new desks are outside, regardless of the fact that her room was so crowded we physically could not move around.
-We had been scheduled, all along, to receive our new furniture in this second wave. This second wave that not one teacher in the entire school was informed of.
-Riley's first set of new desks, then, was not actually supposed to be hers. It was in her room as "storage," despite the fact that her room is clearly in use, and that we are literally next door to a completely empty, abandoned wood shop.
-When they came the second week, they did not just add 10 desks. They took out the 30 desks "stored" in her room and put in 40 brand-new ones.
-My perch has been taken to salvage.
-As we were told all furniture taken from those rooms went to salvage, we can only assume this includes the 30 week-old desks that were removed to make way for this fresh batch.
Mr. JBC says:
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