On Tuesday, the roller coaster ride began. The administration decided to mandate some new room re-assignments, the goal of which was to get the math and science teachers on the same hallway and to give individual rooms to teachers who'd been there the longest.
At the end of the school year last spring, you may recall, I was reassigned from my original room to another room. I have the sneaking suspicion that J., the teacher who shared my room, and who has OCD and some other issues with mood swings, did not want to share the room with me for whatever reason, and complained secretly to the AP, who arranged the move---although the AP claimed it had to do with scheduling. So many teachers are floaters that it's quite a juggling act to schedule classes and have rooms available when so many are shared by two teachers. I moved out of my original room with J., and a young teacher named E. moved in.
On the first teacher pre-planning day, I was just settling into the new room, to which I'd hauled books and papers for three days at the end of the school year, when the AP came in and told the teacher I now shared the room with, K., that she was being re-assigned to one of the new portables outside the main building so that she could have her own room. I could tell that K., who has worked there longer than I, was not too happy. She walked out to the portable, returned, and reported that it was small and dirty and ugly. Meanwhile, the AP had moved a science teacher to one of the portables and re-assigned J., my former "room mate" to the science teacher's room. J. was angry to have been moved rather than sharing the room with E. But then the science teacher, after moving to the portable and standing in it for five minutes, pitched a fit, saying it hurt her allergies or migraines or something. So the AP decided to move her back to the original room, take J. out, and move her to the room where I now was, as K. was being sent to the portable. But K. got mad at being moved, and she had been there longer, so in the end, the AP decided to move me to one side of the new portable, and J. to the other side.
I was filled with trepidation after hearing K's description of the portable classroom. But when I walked over to inspect it, it didn't look bad at all. Either the cleaning crew got to it first or K. was exaggerating. It's new and fresh and fairly large. Fortunately, J. and I have two individual classrooms with separate doors and separate stairsteps leading to our rooms. There are even two restrooms in the middle corridor which separates the two classrooms. My very own restroom!
The room is so new, in fact, that it hasn't been wired for internet. They say it will be taken care of soon, but it makes me beyond insane not to have instant access. The room does not have a built-in LCD projector yet either, although it's in the works. But I dusted off my own personal LCD which I purchased a few years ago when I worked at Groves, which offered zero equipment, and set it up, so I can show visuals and powerpoints.
Physically, moving everything into the new classroom was horrible. Although I had a lot of help from students and male faculty who could hoist heavy things onto their shoulders, I was dripping rivers of sweat after walking back and forth in the hot sun carrying my books and files from the main building to the portable. When my naturally wavy hair gets wet or sweaty, it curls wildly in weird directions. By the end of the day, I looked barbaric.
In addition, my schedule was suddenly altered. I now have Planning during first block. I'd originally been assigned 3rd block planning, which I think is the best because it overlaps lunch and you're free to eat whenever you want. On the other hand, if you have a third block class instead of Planning, you have to interrupt class to send students for lunch and get them re-focused after they've been gone for half an hour.
For a few days this week, I felt very unsettled by the new room and new schedule---who moved my cheese?---but once I got the furniture and desks into the classroom, I thought it looked just fine. Today, I began to see the advantages of having my own room, as opposed to sharing. I don't have to float to another classroom carrying a basket full of papers, all the while knowing that I'll inevitably have forgotten something back in my own room. Now I have all three classes in the same room, so I can always access my own things. I can also write something on the board and know it will stay there because another teacher won't erase it for her class.
In addition, I began to see the advantages of first block planning. It removes some of the early morning pressure inherent in rushing to get there, signing in, getting the room set up and the papers out, and being prepared for a mob of students who need to be "engaged" from bell to bell.
My mood swung from one end of the pendulumn to the other, and by today, I was happy with the new room and the schedule. Am I happy that J., a known freon addict, is in my class for the second time? That's another story for next time.
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