I got all my work done tonight, and I promised myself some
gratification if I did. I never do things like that. I always just do
the fun stuff until it's suddenly midnight and I haven't even started
what I need to get done. But that's a whole 'nother thing to blog about.
What I have been
wanting
to post about is my classroom (which is at the junior high, where I am
every-other day. It is so nice to have a classroom. At the high school, I
run between two floors and three different rooms--one of which has only
chairs, no desks--to teach...but, that's a whole 'nother thing to blog
about).
Did you know new teachers in Utah only get
about $150 of state funds to do things like buy supplies and decorate
their rooms with each year? And after three years of experience (because
you accumulate stuff) that number goes down. Anyway, last year I by the
time I bought a set of white boards, those teacher-y bulletin board
boarders I thought I was supposed to have, and a couple reams of colored
copy paper, there was no money left. So I cut up a calendar I had, and
that, pretty much, was my classroom decoration for the year. It looked
like this:
This year, I decided to suck it up and sink some money into making my
room look more like I wanted it to. I'm pleased with the results.
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| The beautiful
plant and stand (the latter made by my grandpa) until recently lived at
my grandparents'. My parents took care of it over the summer while I was
gone. It's a family effort. Since classes started, one student has
insisted that he's afraid it's going to eat him. |
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| The "found French" bulletin board is for students to pin up things they find in French. (Things they find outside
of the classroom, I have to keep reminding them, as happy as I am that
they realize how all those handouts and worksheets I've been making them
are, in fact, in French.) And those are brooms from the dollar store on
top of the cabinet. For broom hockey (go Canada), not so much for
Quidditch as some have suggested...though, you know, you never know what
will happen. |
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| Yes, these are
all flags from French-speaking countries. If you don't know which
country, I challenge you to figure it out! (Imagine I said that in my
teacher voice.) |
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| Times in
different French-speaking cities. This took like a million years to set
up. Maybe part of that was because I wanted to synchronize the second
hands. |
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| And the rug. A
lot why this started was because I wanted a story-telling rug (which I
found for 30 bucks at Ikea). I learned from my professor Cherice
Montgomery that even high school students enjoy coming to sit on the
floor while you read to them. Boy was she right. |
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If you would like to see my whole list of reasons to study another language, click here to find the Word file.
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