Setting Up A Classroom

For the past two weeks, I had been cleaning my new classroom on and off. When I first came to my new pre-school classroom, I found so many junk things, boxes, dirty toys and so forth. It took me a lot of times to go through with all of the unnecessary things for the classroom. Actually, it was not an easy task to go through especially with the heat.

First, I started out cleaning inside of the closets where there were many spiders, spilling things and disorganizing stuff in pile boxes. The next thing, I did was taking out of the monthly boxes to see what was still good. Truthfully, many of them in the boxes were more than 10 years old! Ewww!

The next day, I had an unexpected right hand helper. A friend of mine came to help me to throw the missing puzzles out, washed and organize the toys and books. That was not the only thing she and I worked together for a day. We also had to figure it out what to keep, throw it away or give it out to the other pre-school teachers. The other teacher who had my classroom had dumped everything. That was NOT fun things to do. Despite of doing what we had to do, I treated my friend a gracious lunch.

A week later, my friend and I gradually decorated the classroom before my permanent aide arrived. My aide admitted that the classroom is far more cheerful than last year. She was also pleased things are being more cleaner and organizing in a group. Still, she is motivated for three reasons: willing to straight everything out in the drawers, keeping the theme: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See, Hear, Sight and Feel? I am incorporating the monthly theme with other pre-school classrooms. She is also excited to do many more work I am giving it to her throughout the year such as finishing the bulletin boards,up, monthly journals, fine motor assignments and many more things to do. Am I being tough?

In reality of setting up a classroom, I am also teaching Kindergarten and first grader. It means I have three different assignments to work with each student on their goal. That is a typical challenging for all special education teachers.

On the 18th, I start having little students in my class. I must admit that I am NERVOUS WRECK because it is a really BIG GAP from teaching junior high school "smarty pant" students for eight years to pre-school students. Wish me luck I will excel in working with the younger kids and keeping my energies up especially at my age.