Ch-Ch-Changes.

What a day.

I knew today was going to be a busy one, seeing that I was moving into a new classroom and setting things up my way - but I didn't realise quite how difficult it was going to be.

Three words for you: I am knackered.

People changed their minds about which room I was going into; so instead of a partially set up classroom, I ended up in an unused one. Which is fine by me, less stress for the other teachers having to move around for me. Except that this classroom hadn't been used as anything other than a storage space for the past couple of years, so it was filthy!

Let me share some achievements from my day;

• Working up a sweat by 9am.


• Ripping off old wallpaper, and dodging the many spiderwebs, pushpins and random bugs that came flying out of it.


• Dancing around massive cockroaches.


• Visiting the stock room for new wallpaper.


• Three times.


• Using up approximately 500 staples.


• Stepping on approximately 500 staples.


• Getting rid of crappy mismatched furniture in the room.


• Filling up the room with new semi-matching furniture.


• Stinking out the room with Dettol table cleaner.


• Realising I had actually stunk out the entire corridor with Dettol table cleaner.


• Getting the room somewhat decent by 5.30pm before being shooed out of the building by the cleaners.

And now let me share some things I am yet to do;

• Find the key to the storeroom.


• Clean and shift the crap that's in the storeroom.


• Shove my OWN stuff into the storeroom.


• Find the key to the window.


• Figure out how to open the sliding door.


• Finish wall papering the main chalkboard wall.


• Find some damn chalk.


• Lug several loads of teaching crap from my car to the room.


• Organise the tables properly, with pencils.


• Grab some workbook sets for the kids to use.


• Steal bookcovers from Belinda's room.


• Steal trays from everyone else's rooms.


• Stick labels on the furniture and trays.


• Figure out what the hell I am actually going to teach these poor cherubs.

But hey, at least we'll be in a pretty looking classroom, right?

I'll take the camera in tomorrow when I've done some more (so much to do before I get the class on Wednesday) cleaning up. I actually wish I'd thought to take the camera in beforehand, because I think it looks much, much better now. It doesn't have brand new squooshy carpet though, like the last classroom I was in. Bummer.

Oh, the class has changed a bit too. Instead of a 1/2/3 class for kids needing learning support, the lovely executives thought it would be a bit too much putting teeny tiny six year olds in with the bigger kids in grade three - so it's been swapped. It's now a 2/3 cross-stage support class. Still a huge challenge, but just a bit less of a challenge.

(Let's not mention the fact that I somehow managed to get the ONE student I asked not to have in that class added onto my list, alright? Sigh.)

Aside from the three elephants that are line dancing across my temples, I was pretty damn happy with getting as much done today as I did. One lovely teacher helped me with wall papering, which saved me a crapload of time, but for the most part I was on my lonesome. And it still looks good! I can absolutely do this "setting up the room" business. Aly power!

(And I also got a chalkboard once again! Hooray! Now I feel like a real teacher. I love my neat chalkboard handwriting, I cannot write to save my life on a whiteboard.)

So. How was your day?