Monday, August 21, 2017

Step Into My Week

Where did the weekend go? Hopefully I am not the only one who feels like it came and went in the blink of an eye. At least I've got a cup of coffee and barricade of pillows with me to start this early Monday morning. I am going to claim that the weekend felt shorter due to a late session of Meet the Teacher but we will get to that! Also, I apologize that this Step Into My Week is so teaching and classroom heavy. It is definitely not my intention to turn Prep In Your Step into a teaching blog but right now it's what I have going on in my life which is reflected through the happenings and photos in this post. 

Tuesday began my first official work week as a teacher. Fortunately I only had meetings that day and was able to work on setting up my classroom the rest of the week. Even as a first year teacher without THAT much stuff I can't even begin to tell you how much of a process this is. While there are still more things I'd like for my classroom I pretty much finished it up this past week. My mentor from Furman came and helped me on Monday and that was such a game changer. She built two bookshelves and cut out so many sheets of laminated things which saved me a ton of time. I am hoping to do a classroom tour on Friday where I'll go into detail about different areas but even at that point I don't think it will feel fully finished. 



The one classroom set up thing that I kept putting off was my hall display. I am on a new wing of our school in a brand new classroom so I have been forbidden to use hot glue (which is a huge deal since other stuff doesn't stick nearly as well). While it looks more appealing to not be surrounded by cinder blocks I also didn't have a pre-existing line to make sure that the papers in my hall display were straight. Since these stay up all year I wanted to do it right so that I only had to do it once. Since I am teaching 4th grade I didn't see a need for an over the top display and finally got it set up to my liking to match the schools construction theme. 


If you're a teacher and were unaware of the fact that Dollar Tree ships then all I have to say is you're welcome. As I mentioned I still have some items needed for my classroom but I finally felt like it was looking more complete when my Dollar Tree online order came in with my storage containers for each students' supplies and for our library came in. I found this set of 36 blue and white storage containers for $36 in true Dollar Tree fashion and am so pleased considering I have friends who splurged on theirs which I wasn't comfortable with doing. I labeled them on Friday morning with some of the labels I made and was so glad to have them in place before Meet the Teacher. 


So many of y'all have been asking me to share my outfits daily and I didn't get much of a response of whether or not you want to see those outfits in a Step Into My Week post or in a separate post on Sundays. I only captured one of my outfits this week since I didn't have to look nice every day but will definitely do my best to share what I've been wearing with you. 

top // jeans // sandals // watch  

And, as I mentioned, Friday was Meet the Teacher! This was probably the highlight of my week since I finally got to put names with faces for the kiddos I'll be teaching this year. I am thrilled to have such an eager group of fourth graders (definitely thought they would tell me no when I asked if they were excited to come back to school but shockingly they didn't) and generous and receptive parents. My volunteer forms were filled out within the first of our two sessions and none of the parents seemed too concerned that this was going to be my first year teaching, a fear I had had.  One of the best parts of being at the same school I student taught at is the fact that the students in the class last year kept stopping by to give me a hug and say hello which felt so welcoming. Yesterday I even opened my work email to find a letter from one of the students in my class this year that was an all about her page modeled on the one I sent home to parents and students about myself.


I finally left school around 7:00 on Friday night (second round of meet the teacher was from 5:00-6:30) and headed straight to meet one of my roommates for dinner. Saturday was spent being semi productive with various school things (my to-do list feels never ending) and laundry and was finished with dinner with friends. Yesterday, I ran errands, tackled a lot of scheduling and transportation documents for my classroom, and was even able to shoot a number of blog pictures between working out and making all of my snacks, lunches, and dinners for the week. I'm finding it pretty essential to work ahead on the weekends which makes the productivity less of a chore and more of a necessity. Today we have a half day work day before the kids come for the first day of school tomorrow! I hope you all have your Eclipse glasses ready and are looking forward to that cool event! 

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