In my first post I said I'd keep this up as frequently as possible, time permitting. Little did I know, 4 and 5 year olds are much more exhausting than I could have imagined and could have the potential to turn my bed time into 10 pm (at the latest). After an 8.5 hour work day, all I want to do is eat, run, be around adults, and get a full 8 hours of sleep (in that order). This makes for little time doing other important things that I should be keeping up with... but I'll try to fill you in on the whirlwind of my past two weeks.
We saw our classroom for the first time on June 18th. Huegel Elementary School is shaped like a space ship and old, to say the least, making for an interesting first day trying to find which classroom was ours. We stumbled upon a teeny tiny room used for Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy, and after checking our maps several times we discovered every teacher's nightmare: teaching in a classroom the size of a closet. My class would be one of the biggest K-Ready classrooms at Huegel with thirteen kids. The classroom was only slightly larger than my bedroom at my apartment, which is pretty small. To make matters worse, the classroom was NOT ready for 4 and 5 year olds that following Monday. The OT/PT items were everywhere, and the janitor very apologetically informed us that they didn't even think this was going to be used as a classroom. Each K-Ready classroom was to be equipped with mini tables and chairs as well as a full kitchen play set, games, puzzles, a carpet, and everything else you would find in any decent Kindergarten classroom. Red flag numero uno, we had none of these. The janitors were great, and while we removed the furniture, exercise equipment, and computers from our classroom, they set out for a hunt around Huegel to find us some furniture and (hopefully) some play sets. Because Ms. Feneis is a new graduate and I obviously have never taught before, our personal supplies were limited to the paper folder games we made in training. After a while we found ourselves asking if this was a joke.
The other teachers at Huegel are amazing, and luckily some of them let us go shopping in their 'real' classrooms that they use during the school year. Here we found several games, puzzles, storage devices, and some play supplies. Slowly, 2 small carpets and furniture started appearing in our classroom. We crossed our fingers that we would have tall students as the janitors delivered chairs meant for 3rd graders to our classroom. We begged the janitors to search for a kitchen set (a Kindergarten staple!) after they notified us that there were at least 3 classrooms without one and MMSD wasn't giving us anymore. They eventually surprised us with a very old half of a kitchen set. We decided we only received this because they felt pretty sorry for us and our circumstances. The pitty cry works every time! Our classroom gradually came together and by 4 pm we were (almost) ready for Monday and 13 students to enter our little closet of a room. As hard as it was to be optimistic, we decided that with an unusually large number of kiddos qualifying for K-Ready this summer, the circumstances could have been worse. Right?
That weekend I decided to try my skills at garage saling, and conveniently, on my run I noticed an awesome garage sale with what looked to be age appropriate items a few blocks up from my apartment. I had heard that teachers buy most of their supplies out of pocket (MMSD teachers have a yearly budget of $125, a little ridiculous.) but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I discovered that garage sales would probably be my best friend for the rest of my life as I found tons of toys, puzzles, an awesome toy Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner which actually makes the vacuuming noise (I tried it on my carpet in my apartment and much to my disappointment, it doesn't really work), a mini lawn mower (unfortunately this doesn't work either...), a small table, and a red plastic fire chief hat (a staple of course). I'd like to mention I got this all for the small amount of $35. I've always been a bargain shopper! The only other garage sale I've been to as an adult I snagged an awesome 12 piece knife set for $3 and a full dish set for $20. It's a mix of talent and skill. I decided my classroom was set after I had pretty much cleared out the entire garage sale. For this the ladies loved me and even let me go home, get my wallet, and make several trips back to my apartment. My mom was also thrilled, as this now meant she had to make room to store these 'supplies' until I someday have my own classroom.
Things were slowly starting to look up for my 13 students and their closet of a classroom they would be spending 8 hours a day in, 5 days a week for the next 6 weeks. If all else fails I guess they got a cool vacuum out of the deal?
No comments:
Post a Comment