Everything But The Kitchen Sink

So I got a job teaching first grade at Garland Elementary.  Woot Woot.

I officially started last Tuesday right after Labor Day.  School had already started the week before.  Therefore, I have no idea what I'm doing.  I mean I do, things have been going very well, I can teach just fine, I'm comfortable with all of that.  But I missed any kind of district training.  So not only do I not know about all the different programs I'm supposed to be using etc, I don't even know the little things like what do I do if I have a kid come in late or how to use the grading system or anything like that.  Not that I can even log into my computer yet...  So all of that is very frustrating.  Like today I found out I missed a meeting for a school committee I didn't even know I was on.  I don't even know where anything is in the school nor even have a key card for the copy machine because no one has had any time to help me out there.  So everything has been really chaotic and stressful there.

To top off all of that stress, my classroom is a mess.  The reason I got hired after school started was that the teacher who used to be in my spot actually passed away a few days before school started and so my kids had a sub for the first week.  I don't mean to be disrespectful of the previous teacher but the lady was a total disorganized pack rat.  By the time I got to the classroom on Friday of the first school week the principal had already sent about a dozen boxes worth of stuff home with the family and there was about a dozen more stacked in the corner to go to the family as well.  I have no idea where all of the stuff in those boxes had even come from because every nook and cranny of that classroom was still packed full of stuff.  Oh and don't worry, the principal still had the two filing cabinets to go through and a big cupboard to check for anything else for the family.

I spent several hours Friday night, about eight hours Saturday and about four more on Labor Day trying to clean and organize the class a bit.  It wasn't so bad though because Nicole was there to help me out.  She was so great.  She spent Friday and Saturday right along with me cleaning and making my classroom look cute.  She bought me teacher presents too!  Like a class calendar and weather charts and cute stuff to decorate my door.  She laminated and cut everything out and hung things up for me so now my classroom at least looks cuter if still a disorganized mess.  Plus, she brought me treats!  She's the best ever eh?  I lost track of  how many giant garbage bags we hauled out of there.  I think there were five just from these two tiny bins (the white thing and the brown one) Nicole cleaned out.

A bin close-up to show you really how small they are and yet had all that crap stuffed in.

Those two had some of the best stuff we found in all the classroom.  It was mostly holiday decorations.  More decorations for each holiday than one could ever fit in the classroom.  Decorations that were ridiculous and ugly.  Decorations faded and torn.  Decorations that made absolutely no sense.  Decorations that showed the clothing and hairstyles from the seventies and earlier, some still unopened.  Girlfriend also found a Family Circle magazine from 1967.  I had so many favorites to choose from, but here are some of the best.

I'm sad that I failed to take pictures at the beginning but I took some of about half way through and some to show the (lack of) organization.

The boxes in the closet are mostly full of carbon copies of all kinds of art crafts and seasonal worksheets.  Don't worry, there were about 18 examples of each project stored in the boxes too.  I also found random piles of rice and opened candy on the floor in there.  I probably have mice.  Most of the stuff on the bulletin board was non-up-to-date info.

This corner still looks like this.  In the cupboard?  Oh those are all bags of books on cassette tape.  I also found books on tape in every other random place in that class you could think of.

 Not only were there a million books on tape (No tape player by the way) I found this collection of books, complete with their accompanying record.

Who knows what all of these books are.  I'll have time to go through them next month.

One of the cupboards the principal hasn't gone through yet and so I can't go through yet.

Same with these filing cabinets.  They are packed with years-old material and records but I can't clean them out and use them until the principal goes through them.  So right now my filing cabinet is an extra chair.

My personal favorite was going through the desk.  I basically ended up just dumping the drawers into the garbage.  I threw away about $200 worth of pens that no longer worked. (I stopped checking them after the first 20 or so had no ink)  There was plenty of unwrapped candy and old medications, one that expired in 1993 and one that expired in 1986.  Packages and packages of unopened supplies.  ie paper clips, brads, thumbtacks, pencils, etc.  I found a million duplicate rubber stamps and dried up ink pads.  Random face cards.  A squished tissue box that was so old the tissues were turning brown.  Three pairs of toenail clippers.  Actual floppy disks of word/number munchers and other fun games.  A grocery bag full of acorns.  A $20 peso from 1953.  About ten different personal checks written out to various companies dating back to 1995 but none more recent than 2005.  Old notes home and things from previous classes from years back.  Old zip lock baggies with holes in them.  Seven kitchen timers and four stop watches.  Cups and different sized corks.  And there was plenty of just strait up garbage.  Everything all just thrown together into the three drawers and piled to the top.  My favorite part of the desk is the huge spot of, what I guess to be, cough syrup that is spilled in the desk.  Now dried up and sticky, with nails and paper clips and Necco Wafers sticking out.  I was only able to salvage about 3% of all the junk that was in the desk.  Some stickers, some sticky notes and some of the supplies.  (The extra supplies I took to the office)  Everything else got thrown out.

This is one of the boxes I filled with stuff from the desk.

Oh yes, I also found in one cupboard a box lid full of candy bars that were so old they were crumbling.  

I still have plenty to clean out and go through and so much to do to make the classroom look cute and look like mine.  But I look forward to what other crazy stuff I might find.  I'll keep you posted.