Going back

I went back into my classroom this week. I haven't set foot in the room since our last day of school in June. On Monday I went by myself and hauled boxes out of the closet. Today I brought my cousins Kyle (16) and Kaitlyn (8) to help me. We got a lot done. Kyle moved all of the desks into groups, took heavy boxes of workbooks down from the closet shelves, and moved my bookshelves back into place. Kait had a blast setting up my reading corner, organizing my stuffed animals, and sharpening pencils. It was a huge help. I'm bringing Kait back tomorrow to help out with a few more things. It's starting to look like a classroom again.

So on that front, all is well.

However, there were some major upheavals in our school over the past few months. At the end of last year, we had hired 3 new teachers (K, 3 and 5) and our former K teacher accepted the job as principal for this school year. At the beginning of August, the new K teacher backed out of the job because of a serious illness in the family. It was at this time that our principal realized that we only had one child registered for Pre-K. After much discussion with the pastor, it was decided that we would close Pre-K, and that our Pre-K teacher would teach K this year. In addition to that, our principal had been trying to hire a new art teacher to replace the one who left last year. However, because we're losing so much money by closing Pre-K, our pastor doesn't think we can afford a new art teacher. Which means the classroom teachers will have to teach art on their own (which is not a huge deal... at least for me). But it also means that we get one less break during the week. That's 45 minutes of prep time that we count on. It's gonna be rough losing that.

Two weeks and counting!