Raining acorns

I have survived the first day!  I figured I should post something now, because if I don't do it right away, who knows when it will happen.  :)  I would consider today a success - no one cried, no one threw tomatoes at me, no one asked their parents to switch to another school.  That's a good thing, right?

Tomorrow, the entire middle school (40 students, plus six teachers) drive seven hours to Leelanau Outdoor Center (LOC), which is a week-long leadership camp put on by the Leelanau/Kohahna camp (which is for Christian Scientists during the summer, but they open it up to area schools during the year).  It's a great way for the students to bond, and I know by the end of the four days I will know them well, too!  So before I go, here are some pictures of the classroom.

It really is a beautiful room!  There are a lot of oak trees on campus, and one happens to be right outside my room.  Whenever there is a breeze, a hoard of acorns falls on the roof of the building, sounding like an intense - and quick - hail storm.  It adds a fun dynamic to the tree-house room!

I teach seventh and eighth grade.  Seventh grade has 15 students, and I have them for homeroom/advisory, language arts, social studies, and study skills.  Study skills happens to be on Monday (it's once a week), so today we were together from 8:50 to 11:20!  I will have to find ways to switch things up for them so it doesn't feel like an interminable time in my room.

Eighth grade has 14 students in it, and I have them for language arts and social studies.  The small class sizes are great!  What a luxury in today's school world, no?

This is my favorite area of the room - the sitting/reading area.  This room used to be split in two, so it's a large space now!  I like having the flexibility to be able to create different sections - even having the round table you see below for working with smaller groups or conferencing.  I brought some books from home and have created a lending library, which hopefully some students will take advantage of.  I also went to IKEA and picked up a few things - the green chair, the rug, and (my favorite) the frog cushion.  That was quite a hit with the students!

I have to share this picture with you.  Last weekend I was at a friend's house, and I saw the "chat noir" poster in a storage closet.  I had just been looking for some posters to make the classroom look more interesting, and I asked this friend - jokingly, of course - if she was using this poster.  She took me seriously, though, and gave it to me!  I have to admit, I can't complain.  I love the poster itself, and it fits Mango so well!  I couldn't resist trying to get her picture with it.  Posing animals is next to impossible, of course, but after a few tries to get her to walk across the poster (holding my free hand above it for her to play with), she sat in this position and I 

got the picture.  

Lastly, I put together a bulletin board outside the room to give the students a sense of what they will be studying this year in social studies.  It ended up being rather complicated, but the idea is that what you see is a combination of what the seventh and eighth graders will be learning this year in social studies (yellow cards), set in the context of transportation advances that were happening at the same time.  Here's an idea of what it looks like: 

And that's about it for now!  Now I get to change into comfortable clothes... and pack for a four-day camping trip with 40 middle-schoolers.

Elgin apartment

The move has officially happened!  I am mostly unpacked and settled into the dorm at Fox River (FRCDS).  I'm living in two rooms off the resident director's apartment - but I have full use of the kitchen in that apartment, so it's pretty much a regular apartment.  Except that it's in the downstairs of a middle school dorm.

Cindy and Aaron (mom and brother) graciously flew out to help with the move this past weekend, and I am eternally grateful to them.  A 10' truck seems like it would be plenty of room for one person to move, but it was tight!  Picture a life-size 3D jigsaw puzzle, and you will have a good picture of what it was like loading up that truck.  We were successful, though, and we smoothly made the six-hour drive to Elgin.

Here's a taste of the unloading process:

      

Karen, my new boss, drove me around the area on Sunday to introduce me to the Elgin/Dundee area.  She felt badly that there isn't a grocery store "close;" there are three in the area, but they are each about 15 minutes away.  15 minutes?  I could only laugh.  After spending the past six years in Elsah, where the closest anything is 20 minutes away, I feel like everything here is right around the corner.  Grocery store, Panera, train station, library, park, mall, Dunkin' Donuts, climbing wall, IKEA - all within a 15 minute drive!

OK, now to the real reason you all are reading this: PICTURES.  Here's the new place!

Living room - 

This alcove is meant to be a closet (since the room is technically a bedroom), but I turned it into an office area - 

the cozy desk area :) -

closet/shelves in between the living room and bedroom (and the door on the left is to the bathroom) - 

bedroom - 

view from the door leading into the kitchen - 

the kitchen (the room on the other side of the cabinets is the dorm director's living room) - 

I got the idea for the frames from a friend at Principia... simple, but better than a blank wall!

I'm also excited about the entertainment set-up

there, where I have both my stereo set up and 

extra speakers that can connect to my laptop for

watching movies while I cook  :)

And so it goes

Welcome, one and all, to that which I no longer feel I can avoid: 

The Blog.  (I wonder how many blogs start out with a sentence of that kind.)  As so many have done before me, I have concluded that a blog is the most convenient way to keep my devoted fan base aware of the exciting and awe-inspiring life that I lead.   Or something like that.

Anyway, the big day is almost upon me!  In 48 hours, I will have moved to Elgin, Illinois, to start my illustrious career as a middle school English and social studies teacher.  Over the past couple of weeks, my apartment has gone from looking like this:

... to this:

On Friday, everything I own will be tucked into a Budget rental truck and hauled up to Chi-town! OK, Elgin, actually, but Chicago is just around the corner.  A visual, for those of you not familiar with northern Illinois (I was pretty much clueless until a couple months ago):  

View Larger Map

I will be teaching seventh and eighth grade English and social studies - which includes, but is not limited to, the Revolutionary War, the Depression, Lord of the Flies, Elizabethan England, semicolons, the Constitution, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the development of income tax. I don't know about you, but sounds like a rockin' good time to me! Heading into my first year as a teacher, I'm not sure how much time I will be able to devote to my blog life, but hopefully I can post exciting updates from time to time.