The quad I was placed in consisted of myself and three other teachers. I was sandwiched between Ms. Miller and Ms. Williams with the third teacher was Mrs. Prescott. Williams and Miller both had interns and they had been nice enough to put paper on the bulletin boards in the classroom for the fourth teacher. Although I had been warned, I honestly never realized how little teachers are given to set up their classroom. So, I walked into a room of furniture with some background paper on the bulletin board and absolutely no direction. It would be an understatement to say I was overwhelmed – I literally had no idea what to do. Add in the fact I had little time to actually set up the classroom thanks to the new teacher training on Thursday and meet the teacher Friday. As I sit here writing this I can honestly say I have no idea what I would have done if not for Mrs. Osborne and Ms. Patterson. They stayed until long after dark both Wednesday and Thursday to help me out. At one point I was so clueless I was sitting on the floor writing “Weclome to Kindergarten” in magnets on one of my stations. Mrs. Patterson asked me what I was doing and then told me I needed to work on something else because that would be destroyed within the opening minutes of meet the teacher. At first they were asking for my advise on how to move things around, to which I told them I honestly didn’t care – they could do it for me. So, they did. In hindsight it makes me smile because later I was told my room was set up like a first grade classroom, which makes sense since two first-grade teachers helped me set it up. I liked the set up so much I kept it the same my second year teaching. My third year I redecorated, but that was more because of the SMARTBoard and less because I particularly wanted to.
When we were given our classroom lists I was very pleasantly surprised to see a familiar last name – it ended up belonging to the sister of a girl who had been in the classroom during my internship. This was obviously a huge relief. I had a total of nineteen kids – the class size limit was 18.5, so this was pretty much expected. Meet the teacher went well – I tried to copy everything I had seen Mrs. Osborne do/say the previous year. I plastered a smile on my face, introduced myself, and lowered down to the students level and asked if I could hug them. There was only one child who rejected my hugs. That day made me feel even more blessed to have had my full-time internship in the fall– how people handle the first days of school and meet the teacher without ever seeing it in action is something I can only speculate at.
During meet the teacher I was a little surprised because I kept getting students who weren’t on my original list – by 1:30 (an hour and a half after meet the teacher started), I had a total of twenty-two students I had seen. I was walking around, fixing my magnets (Ms. Patterson was correct when she told me it would be destroyed within the opening minutes). There were only about ten minutes of meet the teacher left when I met the twenty-third student: Amanda. She was a Hispanic girl who was terrified. I recognized her brother instantly – although he was not in the class I interned in, he had been in the same quad. On the playground I would teach a small group of students sign language and he would join us a few times a week. He was encouraging Amanda to come in, saying “You got a nice teacher – I know her.” In kindergarten we have these huge rectangular carpets with five different columns and about six rows. The rows are all the same color, with each column being different. It helps keep the kids in their assigned seat. Anyway, I played some games with Amanda and her brother where I would have them tell me how they thought they would sit if I was standing in different locations. I ran around and acted as silly as possible in heels, which resulted in Amanda stopping her crying and started smiling some. I talked to her parents a bit afterwards – mostly her dad, as her mom spoke limited English. I was instantly glad she had been added to my class.
After they left, I talked to the other teachers and discovered they all had around the same number students. Due to all the kids who just showed up without registering, we were going to have to hire two new teachers; however, it was going to take a few weeks for all the paperwork to go through. I didn’t know any better, so twenty-three students didn’t seem much different than eighteen. Oh how naïve I was!
