Seeing the New Room

Today I finally got to see my new room!! It's so much bigger than I thought it was going to be which is exciting and a little overwhelming. The teacher who used to be in the room left so much stuff behind so mostly I was going through things and throwing a lot of stuff away. 

So I will have seven of those little tables for my students. I was thinking about doing groups with 2 tables together with a plastic tower drawer that they share. 

Just about every single one of these cabinets and drawers had something in them. Tons of old materials and resources that I can use but also a ton of junk I ended up throwing away. I do like that I have my own smaller desk with shelves so I can keep my stuff separated. And I'm glad that my room had a horseshoe table that I can use for all my group work. 

In this space I'm getting a smartboard installed and a docking station. I'm not great with technology so I'm hoping this gets put in soon so I can figure out different ways to use it. I am happy that I don't have to give up all my whiteboard space for it. 

After 5 hours of cleaning and being in a hot room I finally had to take a break and leave. I took my first units worth of teachers editions with me so I can spend all day tomorrow going through them. Then  on Friday I'll have an "official" (aka paid) planning meeting with some of the other teachers so hopefully it'll give me a good starting point for planning. It was a very busy and pretty overwhelming day. I had no clue that my room would be so full when I walked in but it'll help cut down my supply cost. I was hoping to get a lot more done while I was there but I think it was better not bringing in my own stuff yet. If I had boxes of stuff with me I would have been even more stressed trying to find space for it all right away. It was a good way to jump in and start making it my own room. 

Curriculum Overload

First off, I have t-minus 4 days until graduation and it still has not entirely set in yet. Maybe I will really start to get excited about it when I'm walking across the stage. I have been so busy and felt like I already graduated when I signed my contract.
Today though I printed over 100 pages for all my curriculum maps, my printer was pretty stressed out. They are so overwhelming to read and I already found some things that don't quite match up with how I had wanted the year to be. I think that my unit ideas will still work but they will need to be rearranged and done in a different order. What is the hardest for me now is that some skills will need to be saved or taught earlier than I had planned. I probably should have looked at my teams maps sooner but now I know. At least this means I can focus on what resources I need to collect over the summer and really decide on what is a priority to get/find/make and what can wait.
More and more I'm finding it difficult to be in Tucson and have to communicate with my principal over email and phone calls. I really cannot wait until I can actually go in and take stock of my room and get some clarification about next year. I set the date of May 29th to make the drive up there to get all my teacher copies and student data. Hopefully then it'll be easier to be away from the school while I plan for a couple of weeks back here in Tucson. 

Yesterday was my last day of student teaching and I still cannot believe I am done and just waiting for graduation. It was an incredible semester and I learned so much. I know some people say it is the most stressful semester but that wasn't the experience I had. Through it all I felt very supported and was happy to go to class everyday. 
Now I really need to start working on what I am going to do with my first graders. There is only 3 months and 1 day until the first day of school. I started looking at all the standards and got kind of overwhelmed. I know I have a whole year and need to just focus on where my kids are at now. But I also am trying to figure out my long term plan and goals. I have some unit ideas but it feels like I will never have the money and resources to teach them the way I imagine them. For now I need to work through my to-do list and get my projects done so I can set up my room and plan what that first day will actually be like.