The Roses of Success

Still cautious, but so far? I'm loving this school.

By no means is everything perfect. But that's okay. In fact, I'd be a lot more worried if it was.

I'm going to lots of meetings still, yet I am getting things done. We have one more day tomorrow before the kids come. There's a meeting or two in the morning, then more time in the afternoon to work on our rooms.

My room's coming together. Here's how I set it up for Back to School Night last week:



And I think I discovered the reason to have a separate office:



That's where I stashed the unpacked goods right before the parents started showing up.

Rachel came in after she finished work on Friday to help me decorate. She gave me good opinions on things (like moving my desk) and helped me hang stars.



(Note her safety goggles - she's so prepared, she must be a nurse!)

Here's the result:



I like it. I'm not certain about the student desks yet - I spent the last hour today fiddling with them again and wound up with this:



I might change it again tomorrow. As those of you who had me at DPJH well know, I tend to change my desks around a lot. Mostly, my puzzle here is how to fit all of the desks into this room without making the ones on the left seem like they're sitting in the hall. See?



The commute is getting a little old after a week. It's not bad, certainly, but I am tired at the end of the day, and it's a longer drive. Still, I did the math last week and I got 34.78 miles to the gallon. Not bad, considering that half of those miles were with a backseat and trunk full of books.

I'm happy to do the commute, though, for the sake of being at a school I like. I like the people, too. The other new teacher at the school and I have really hit it off (she's teaching Spanish and French), the orchestra teacher seems great to work with, and the secretaries are absolute delights. For example? When I walked into my room this morning, I found this on my desk:



The note wished me a wonderful week and was signed by the principal's secretary. I KNOW! How sweet is that?

So, I'm looking forward to tomorrow, and to Wednesday, and to the rest of this year. And that's really, really nice after last year.

P.S. Weird blurriness with the last two photos, right? Silly iPhone doesn't like Mountain Town High School at all!