So It Begins.....

"A penny for my thoughts, oh no I’ll sell them for a dollar"-- If I die young, The Band Perry.

I have come to the conclusion that as much preparation and educational classes you sit through, you'll never know what is coming next when you enter the workforce and "real world" of education.

As I write this, I am sitting on my couch enjoying the last Saturday before my first year as a teacher begins. I have sat through orientation meetings, met a lot of great people and have gone through the routine beginning of the year meetings that I've heard would happen when I was going through college. I even won a gift card to the local coffee shoppe and a book titled "Why didn't they teach me this in college" which I have a feeling will be very helpful throughout my first year.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I would have an actual classroom instead of a hallway to work with my students and equally excited to get it set up and ready for open house. I share the room with another teacher and we both agreed to go with a farm theme for the room to bring in the culture that the majority of the kids we'll be working with know. Now I've collected some things over the years that I was in school to start setting up a classroom, but when you're expecting a room that's pretty much only a 1/4 of what you are given, my little collection seemed very tiny. Now don't get me wrong, I'll take the bigger room, and with that spend more to try to get it looking nicely before my kids come. I laughed with a seasoned teacher the other day saying you can tell who the new teachers are because they are the ones walking the halls looking diligently at the items on the "free take me" tables that the seasoned teachers have put in the hallway. Yes, I was one of those people, and the good news is I found the materials the other Deaf and Hard of Hearing teacher left (which I get to inherit). The dollar general store in town and I have formed quite the relationship and most of the employees would probably know me by name right now if I would tell them. Some of my favorite purchases have been a 5X9 rug, 12 plastic blue bins, composition books, and file folders (3 in a set)! Mom and Dad have always said I'd spend most of my leftover money from paychecks on things my students need, and I'm starting to believe they were absolutely right.

For now, I'm making a list of all the things I still need to add to my classroom and last minute check lists that seems to be growing. I have a feeling that will never end.

So a penny for my thoughts, oh no I'll sell em for a dollar....if you think you're fully prepared to go into whatever job you have straight out of college, you're wrong. You'll have those "holy crap what did I get myself into moments", but you'll find that you are more prepared than you think!

So here's to life..
Simply N