the good and the ugly

It’s the beginning of November and I’m just starting to get my classroom really organized. I had scrounged around the school and found a drying rack available, so I put it in my room for paper. I am really excited that I have to have the huge stacks of paper in the closet somewhere, piled up on top of each other. It is extremely difficult to take out when in a hurry.

I even got my art centre all organized so that the students have easy access to all the creative tools in the classroom. A literature sorter from Staples helped lots with organizing smaller pieces of construction paper. I may need another one to provide options of materials. I even bought a large plastic drawer system to store scraps of construction paper and stuff.

Meanwhile, my desk has gone totally out the window with the amount of stuff I have on it. The past few days, I’ve been at school until 5:30 just reorganizing stuff. I have tried to make the student space more live-able and have been delaying my desk area.

Report cards are due to be submitted into the office in 2 weeks. I have yet to start them. The major obstacle is the fact that I can’t sit down for even a few seconds to access the students in my class. Today, I sat down for about 5 seconds with a student to read with her, and the interruptions from other students just started. The student I was with waited and waited, and I really never got back to read with her today. Last week, I had 10 students away, and I actually got 6 alphabet assessments done with them in one day. Now that everyone is in class, it’s nearly impossible to do any further assessments. I’ve requested some consultation with the VP for suggestions on how I can assess with such a busy class. I’m not sure how much help it will be, for it will provide very little time to compile the data I will need/want.

It’s actually quite frustrating in the class right now. Last week, we had many students away, and found that it was quite manageable and relaxing to be in the class. In comparison to this week, it has been very crazy the whole day and the attention seeking behaviours are extremely prevalent with 26 students.