Back to School

There is nothing like walking back into your old classroom and it looks like this.

Plain white walls and a seating arrangement that could be best described as a nightmare scenario. It's not that I actually expect the janitors to arrange the classroom perfectly, but just throwing them against the wall would be better than this!

After much work, I did get my classroom the way I wanted it. I am so happy with how it turned out! I think it is the best yet!

I did invest in lots of fabric from Walmart (FYI...not cheap at Walmart. I nearly died when the lady who cut all my fabric said it was going to be $40! I don't think I've ever spent $40 there, even when I've grocery shopped!).

I even made new curtains for my classroom (via Stitch Witch, my new best friend). After nearly screaming at the handheld sewing machine (which I spend the big bucks on, all twenty of them) I gave it to Stitch Witch. Wow, what was I doing waisting my time with a machine???

I actually had students on the first day of school walk into my classroom and say, "Wow!" (because a true measure of how well the year is going to go does depend on the decorations of the teachers classroom...haha...not.)

Another student said to me today, "I was so excited when I walked into your classroom and it looked like an elementary classroom." I'm still trying to figure out if that is a good thing or not. I'll keep weighing the pros and cons and get back to you on that one.

I am very excited about my new huge bulletin board addition in the back of the room, labeled "Jones' Superstars!" I am going to give the students all different colored star cut-outs for good things they do (behavior, test grades, class grades, improvements, etc.). And each color is going to have a name for a different kind of star (Super Giants, Dwarfs, Neutron, Pulsar, etc). I do have to teach them the Hertzprung-Russell Diagram for the first time this year (which is the diagram that shows what classifies the stars based on their temperature vs. luminosity).

The first two days have been great so far and I can't wait for the rest of the year (or to get a little more sleep)!