Wednesday, August 15, 2012

29

Yesterday, for the first time since summer school (a whole two weeks ago), I walked into my classroom. As always, the engineers had left me a lovely present--a huge pile of furniture on one side of the room. Fortunately the sweet lovely fifth grade teachers came down and helped me move things. So now my room looks all nice and neat again, except the chairs. I'll do those later.

I have mountains of crayons. Literally boxes upon boxes of the things. So many, in fact, that at the end of last year I just got a bunch of plastic bags and told my first graders to go to town and just take them home. That worked out okay until someone took all the crayons at her table and left her little crying friend with an empty bag. I was shocked. Didn't we JUST read Compartimos todo (We Share Everything)? Has Robert Munsch taught you nothing?

Alright, alright. In hindsight, I should have distributed them in a bit more organized way. But I really just needed to make room for the millions of new crayons still sitting in my storage closet. Maybe they'll be prizes or something?

I went to the office to say hello to everyone. I decided (unwisely?) to ask our lovely office lady (what is her title again? I think Queen of Organizational Awesomeness or La reina de la oficina would work) for my class list. I know it's two weeks til school and I might not actually know for sure who I've got til Labor Day, but I just wanted to mentally prepare myself for what I'm going to get. And what I got was


29.

I know that for some of you, this is nothing. For some of you, you've had 30 or more before. But I saw that number and I'm pretty sure my hair stood on end.

29! My first year in first grade two years ago, I had 26. And I'm pretty sure that by November I only had 3 strands of hair left. (I've been wearing a wig ever since...shhhhh don't tell my kids!) Granted, those little darlings went on to second grade and bring joy to their new teacher's lives (and by that I mean they are all wearing wigs now, too. We look FABULOUS). 

Que Dios me de gracia, paciencia y fuerza...

So while I was bouncing with excitement (read: wallowing in my misery) at the news, I took a look at the class lists for the two fifth grade teachers--32 and 32. At first I thought, Meh, you have big kids...you'll be fine. And then I remembered that one is a first year teacher and one is a second year teacher.

Ouch.

I think this year will require lots of support (read: trips to happy hour).

2 comments:

  1. love, love, love this one, too - especially the large, red 29. i soooo understand what you mean.

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  2. I didn't even have enough tables and chairs! Fortunately (?) a few of them didn't show up (there is a lot of change in the roster the first two weeks of school), so I ended up with *only* 26... :)

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