I"M A TEACHER!!!

The first day of school is in less than one week. The summer just flew by! I think I'm as ready as I can be. I almost have the entire first quarter planned out, including homework assignments, which was quite the task.

So I'm going to be teaching 4 classes- 3 sections of Algebra 1 and 1 section of an Algebra/Pre-Algebra. My school also has a strong advisory program that all of the teachers take part in. I will have an advisory of between 12 and 14 students- mine will all be ninth graders. I was able to choose the theme of my advisory, and I picked 'iCraft'. So we are going to do lots of crafting projects. My advisory will mostly likely be all girls, but I'm okay with that. Hopefully I will be able to teach all of the students how to knit-if they don't know already- and we can all knit as many scarves as possible that we can donate to a shelter of some sort around the holidays.

I was able to get into my classroom this past week and set up! It was by far the most fun I've ever had at work! Here are some of the 'before' pictures of my classroom on the left. It's a huge room. It is almost twice as big as the room I was in last semester, but with only two more desks. It's quite the upgrade! The room already has a Smartboard in it - for those of you who are unfamiliar with Smart Boards here is a little video to watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U05WeXPGlk
I create all of my lesson plans using Notebook software and then use my Smart Board in class. When I first started student teaching, I thought that the smart board was silly and unnecessary, but after a semester of using it everyday, I honestly have no idea how I could teach without one! It's an amazing tool that has the potential to improve education. Anyway, my room also has a full wall of white boards and it had a small and really gross old chalk board. The chalk board was written on and scratched up, so I covered it up with poster paper and turned it into a bulletin board. One of the walls in the room has built in closets and shelves.

I covered the old chalk board and the cork boards with poster paper to create fun bulletin boards. I put up posters and hung up all of the math jokes that I collected over the summer. I also printed out and laminated pictures of the top twenty mathematicians of all time to hang up in my room. I hung up mountain climbing guys and a cool wall pocket system. I also bought a big calendar and laminated it too. Here are some of the 'after' pictures! What do you think?





































I set up the desks in a flying V like pattern angled towards the smartboard (it's black int he pictures because it is covered up with a fabric cover. There are 20 desks in the room in little rows of either 3 or 4.

So, I have a few days left until I become a real-live teacher. I've been preparing for this for years. Since I was a little girl torturing my sister and our neighborhood friends to 'play school' which for me was a very fun game, but to them was hours of school work which they considered painful. After years of working hard in school to get the grades to go to college and grad school, after many hours spent tutoring and summers sacrificed to math camp and after certification tests, student teaching and a master's degree- it's finally here. In just a few days I'm going to be a math teacher. Life Goal: Achieved!

On another note, our attempts to find a new apartment are proving annoying. Zach went to look at a place yesterday that he liked, but it's such a complicated process. Hopefully, we will find a place soon and have the whole ordeal done with before school gets in full swing. We made a delicious home-made mac and cheese the other night. It was so creamy with a nice crunchy backed top. It was great!