Tuesday, August 11, 2009

A Room With A View

Here's my new classroom:

My New Classroom

Pretty, huh?

The school is designed so that each subject (English, History, Science, Math) has classrooms grouped around a central computer lab and a shared teachers' office. Here's a picture of the computer lab (you can see part of one of my walls on the right):

Split Computer Pod

Opposite from the entrance to my room are some large windows. They look out onto the library below, and if I stand in just the right place, I can see out of the library's windows onto the river:

Classroom View

You know the scenery around Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies? Especially the scenery you can see during the Quidditch matches? That's my school's setting now, baby - as close as you can get to England's hills in the Colorado mountains. It's definitely the best view from a classroom I've had so far, even if it can only be seen from one corner.

I tried to set my desk up in the back so I could look out there, but the phone jack is up front. They moved my desk to the front of the room last night and set up my computer (it's now in front of and parallel to that corner cabinet you can see in the first picture). I'm torn between being able to look at the river and trees while also keeping an eye on students from behind (which I prefer when I'm at my desk during class), and the inconvenience of having the phone across the room from my computer.

Oh, also? Did you notice the lack of doors? Behold:

No Doors!

That's the entrance to my room. I'm skeptical about the practicality of putting the drama and the speech class in a room with no doors in a shared pod.

I'll probably put up some more pictures here next week when I get the room all decorated and such. They've booked us pretty full of meetings this week (naturally), so I've only had time to haul boxes of stuff from my car up to my room. I'm taking my theater books from my bookcases at home to the (should-be-arriving-Friday) bookcases at school. I have a lot of theater books.

On the plus side, I'm liking this school far better than STMS (FAR better), despite my I've-been-burned-before caution. I'll tell you more about this later, but as a teaser, here's a direct quote from the head of the English department today:

"I'm not going to tell you exactly how to teach or that you should be on this page by this date. Teach your students how to write, how to read, and how to think. How you do that's up to you."

Sound cue: The "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah


P.S. Check out those boards in the first photo again. Oddly, those aren't chalkboards - they're white boards.

Gray boards?

I'm confused by them.

3 comments:

  1. Can I come to your school? Please? I'll put Z in daycare and dress my teeny-bopperist. I'll keep a low profile, I promise.

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  2. It looks like a great school! I started a my new place as well. It' very different from Small Town Middle School. Different in a good way.

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  3. What?! Windows in a classroom?! Has the world gone mad?! Looks beautiful, at least a big step up from DPJH. Wish I were down the hall!

    ReplyDelete