transition

Now that grad school is finished, I can finally give my full attention to my classroom. The timing couldn't be better. It's now the beginning of the second trimester, so I can kind of start with a clean slate. However, I'm still tying up some loose ends with report cards. Conferences are tomorrow, and I'm not sure I'm ready. The grades are in. There just aren't as many as I've had in the past. There are enough grades to assess each student's progress accurately, but as I'm looking things over, I keep thinking, "Oh, I never got around to that project," or "I wish we'd had more time to finish that writing piece, so I could have counted it for this trimester."

Oh, and my classroom is a disaster. The school's heater has been broken, and I wasn't in my classroom for more than half an hour last week. We had to close school Monday and Tuesday, we taught in the convent on Wednesday and Thursday (I shared the basement with second and third grade), and then when the heat still wasn't working, we decided to close school on Friday. So I haven't had any time to clean, take down Thanksgiving decorations, file the stack of papers sitting on my desk, or put up the rest of my Christmas decorations. My room isn't really dirty, just extremely cluttered and disorganized.

So, my game plan for tomorrow is as follows: Teach. File papers while the kids are doing independent work or having snack. Take down turkeys and put up Christmas-y things when kids are at gym. Shove all miscellaneous things in coat closet five seconds before parents arrive for conferences. Light mini-Christmas tree and play instrumental Christmas music in the hopes that parents will not notice any remaining clutter. Wish me luck.