Don't want to be a total negatron so today I will concentrate on some of the good things that have happened with respect to school so far.

One: My classroom has been freshly painted, and it is a lovely shade of pale aqua. It feels clean and calm.

Two: After nine hours in the room today, and with the help of my brother Joseph and his lovely girlfriend Melanie, I have something resembling an organized elementary classroom. It will still be a long day tomorrow, but I'm not panicking anymore.

Three: I poached a nice easy chair from the school's 'library' today. It will be put to good use in my reading corner until someone misses it, which will be a long time since the school doesn't have a librarian. And it even matches my walls. Sort of.

Four: I have put together an almost respectable classroom library, without spending a ton of my own money. Research says that to optimally encourage independent reading, you need at least 20 books per child in the room. Since I have only 11 kids I think I'm hitting that benchmark. Most of the books came from a neglected shelf of hand-me-downs that actually had a ton of good stuff. The secretary said they were donated a couple of years ago but nobody's ever looked at them. I found like 40 Newberry Medal books and a lot of other quality, grade-level stuff. Yaay!

Five: In addition to the books that kids can self-select from, I have classroom sets of several good novels. So although the school has no office-supply type of stuff, they have fairly decent instructional resources. (Since this is a positives-only post, I will refrain from mentioning the state of the science and social studies textbooks at the moment.)

Six: The teacher next door to me is super nice. Her name is Ms. Thomas and she's been teaching 1st grade at the school for 14 years. She's really gone out of her way to make me feel welcome. Among other things, she recognized my frustration with the bulletin board situation and somehow procured paper and borders for me. And she gave me some paint so I could repaint the bookshelves in my room, which were either really dirty or this horrid shade of neon green. Now they're a nice buttery yellow.

Seven: Only one more day til I get to meet my kids!