When New Teacher Meets New Classroom!

Four days... FOUR DAYS... Ladies and gentleman, I have had accesses to my first-ever classroom for four days, and I feel like a HOT MESS!

Four days has really felt like four months. When I walked into my room for the first, time I was elated! I saw all of the bulletin board space and floor space and couldn't wait to develop my domain. However, I literally had NO idea where or how to begin...

My grandfather was nice enough to help me move all of my teacher supplies and furniture from my bedroom to my classroom. However, when we did, it took up a lot of space and was a scattered mess around the room. Then, he spent another whole day helping me take down the previous teachers bulletin boards, and then begin putting up my own (although I think I am going to change them again).

I had mounds of curriculum materials left for me to go through, some outdated and some current. I have arranged things in one area, only to rearrange them somewhere else, and then again 3 or 4 more times. I brought in my own computer desk, leaving the old one sitting in a corner. There's a file cabinet I don't want, as well as too many desks that I cannot use. (Custodians cannot pick these things up until after they are done waxing the hallway floors).

Needless to say, my room is quite cluttered at the moment....

Yesterday we painted part of my room. We also decided that we will need to build a book shelf for the reading corner. (There's an entire shelf that has been ripped out and they are not replacing it. So as of right now, I have nowhere to put my library book bins).

To the right of those blue counters was where the old book shelf USED to be...

Walking into an empty room and not having my other first grade team there to guide me has been a bit overwhelming. However, ladies and gents, there is a light at the end of the tunnel!

My training on Readers/Writers Workshop has been going on this week, which has really helped me narrow my focus and visualize how I want things to work in my room. I have stepped back and taken a very long deep breath (more than once). A habit I have is wanting to do everything at one time as early and as fast as possible. NOT GONNA HAPPEN, JENN!

I decided to take the night off. I have been going to training from 8:30am-3:30pm, and then straight to work in my classroom until about 8:30pm (when the custodians kick me out). So I decided to just go home and breath. You really need that from time to time... Although, I am still sitting on my laptop working on stuff, or course.

You can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you cant take the classroom out of the teacher!

I will post pictures of my room when it doesn't look like a post-apocalyptic-war-zone! I hope I am not the only one who has had a hard time getting her head around things within the first few days of being in her room! If you all have any advice on how to get it all together, or any stories of your disaster zones, please do share!