The large storage area with a double door entry has been cleared of all desks and detritus that prevented me from making full use of it. As a result, all of the “stuff” of teaching can be stored and accessed away from the main teaching area. Previously everything was on a cart and the carts hung out on the perimeter of the room. Now the cart sits in the space waiting for the student helper to retrieve needed items and roll it out to everyone.
I’m going to have these pictures blown up and put on the walls so that the putter away-ers know what it should look like when they’re done because after 30+ years it’s painfully obvious that I can’t do that and there are, in fact, some kids who like to make things tidy. Go figure.
One of the most annoying parts of running a classroom is to pick kids to do stuff. I try to make sure I spread the love but don’t know how successful I am. So I bought tongue depressors. Each class has an in cup and an out cup. 300+ names on depressors (writing that many is still better than having one in your mouth). I hope it becomes a convenience and not another new thing that I tried that didn’t work.
And finally the rule about charity is that it’s not really that if you talk about it. But it’s my blog and I only have 2-3 readers. Also rather than a bragging thing it’s more about the gratitude that I have to be able to do small things.
We have a substitute custodian. I taught her 2 boys, one grown and working, the other in high school (and possible in my music appreciation class though I’ve yet to get a class list.) She looks like she might weigh 100 lbs soaking wet. I snagged her in the hallway and asked her to help me do the heavy things and to sweep and mop the new space. She did so with a smile. While it’s all in a days work, I gave her $20 to buy her son a pizza for dinner. There can’t be much extra cash in custodian subbing. She came back and thanked me again at the end of the day telling me that her son was excited and had placed his order. I am very grateful for the fact that finally at this point in life I have the means to be helpful.
Tomorrow there is a keynote speaker on working with children who have experienced trauma. There were absolutely no music teacher sessions after that so I am going to one on making the most of your professional twitter account (really? I’ll admit I’m going to it to look for ways for greathusbandbob to spread his presidential top tens to a broader audience), a session on internet safety where I will be instructed to create passwords that are 25 characters long and a session called West Virginia history which was the last choice available other than instruction on how to use the new math textbooks.
Finally behavior rewards. Classroom teacher each have their own things. While I usually jus mlog on to whatever they do, I wanted some rewards in my room. So far I’ve brought out the previously used risk rocks (dollar store river rocks). I’ve got a large collection of shells which will be a reward for not being “shellfish”. We had been using “caught being good” tokens at a school store. That’s been discontinued but there are still plenty of tokens. I think they might just like having tokens. And as always, there are the Mrs. Terry picture stickers. I really crack me up.
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