RE: Biography, Please!

6:00 pm
The school secretary (a very nice but slightly intimidating man with a paper-cost fixation) has been emailing me asking for a biography they can put on the school website. It was supposed to be done a month ago but got forgotten in the paper shuffling that is registration, training, and hiring. The biography is only supposed to be 150 words long--surely I've done enough to fill that much space-- but my delete button has been working in overtime trying to eradicate all traces of my personality from the words. Normally, I'm proud of my eccentricities but do I really want my student's parents to know that in the past month I have dabbled in both cross-dressing and pie-wrestling?

6:30 pm
So. Frustrated. Think I will go make some pasta.

6:35 pm
Okay, I can do this. I am a well-rounded modern woman with perfectly grown-up hobbies. My facebook page is set to private, anyway, so should be covered enough to convince people of this.

6:55 pm
"I'm very excited..."

"I grew up in..."

"My hobbies are..."

Oh gosh. My biography is so similar to the ones already online I could be plagiarizing from five different people at once. Maybe I'll talk about basketball? It's a new hobby but is surely an adult thing to like. Maybe will cause subconscious bond with students' parents who will instantly like me more and want me to teach their children and not be at all worried about my first-year-ness.

What if they try to talk to me about basketball? Would be exposed as a fraud. I know nothing about the rules. I just like to cheer and wear sporty t-shirts.

7:10 pm
Sophie has offered to write my biography for me. Love her. Brilliant girl.

Pasta water has completely boiled away! Am failure in the kitchen-- attention issues.Will be leaving that out of biography.

7:30 pm

Sophie's biography did not turn out how expected. Unusable for classroom but perhaps if put on OKCupid will draw interesting emails.

"May name is Much Bigger Desk, and I am the most badass teacher your students will ever have. When not in the classroom I dress like a male mexican, drool over barely-legal singing youths, cook fine meals, walk around all pretty, consult single co-eds on dating, read lots of books and stress over my classroom to my best friend. Two of my passions are traveling and teaching, and a few years ago I merged those two together for a fantastic Japan experience teaching English to cute little Asian kids. I managed to eat a few chicken feet and bugs too, as well as getting some weird skin rash...but don't worry, it doesn't flare up often and I don't think it's contagious. I'm not racist, and think all kids are cute. I am excited to work on tolerance and love in my classroom, bringing a murder-esque theme to the classroom to help all children realize that with the proper logic and sleuthing skills, they will get caught. My best friend, Sophie, is also excited for this school year, looks forward to meeting your students when she helps with the pet teacup piglet in my classroom. I think that together we can make this a truly special time for you and your child. If it's not, that is because you are a soulless excuse for a parent who doesn't appreciate my sweat and tears and desire to watch your child achieve and grow. 

Here's to an exciting new year!

Ms.M.B.D."

8:45pm
Sigh. Will be copying from my intro letter I mailed to parents. They can read it twice.

Thursday- July 28, 2011

T-minus 25 days until school starts. 

I don't know what to do with myself.

Went into new classroom for the first time this week. School was mostly empty so no one was there to see me peer around corners and tug on locked doors. Felt very bank-robber-y and stealthy until custodian walked by. Luckily, was tugging on own door and second key I tried fit the lock. Hoorah!


Seemed dark and empty (improved once I located the light-switches on top of the mirror) and utterly imbued with Kristy-ness. The old intern may have taken her U.S.A.-themed decorations with her, but am very aware that this was her space.Mostly because is not my space. I would never put my bookcases up in front of my desk.

Mentor teacher found me sprawled on the floor reading from Harry Wong's First Days of School. She is obviously a classy woman, as failed to bring up my bare feet and lack of anything having been moved. Spent the next three hours going over the first two weeks of school and the importance of perfecting your physical space before moving to planning stage.

Spent the next morning visiting teacher stores looking for C.S.I. themed decorations. Imagined yellow warning tape borders, magnifying glasses on the wall, "get caught reading" posters in my reading nook. Unfortunately, as was warned by mentor, the brilliant ideas in my head were entirely unsupported by available materials. Clerk had a weird bug fetish, as kept trying to sell me poster-sized images of bugs. I tried to explain that while my fifth graders were into science, they were more into mad-scientist chemistry than roly-polies. Clerk then showed me Superman borders. The store phone began to ring and I slipped out the door in order to avoid further unhelpful suggestions from increasingly frustrated woman.

No luck at party stores either. While they did have C.S.I. decor, all revolved around bullet holes and fake blood. Can just imagine the parents' faces at open house.

Went back to classroom today.

9:00
Root through all drawers and cabinets and take inventory of what Kristy left behind. Surprisingly little, though I do find a large number of green paper boxes stuffed into a cabinet labeled Social Studies. I'm not sure what to do with them but am operating under the faith that last year's teacher knew what she was doing and so can not bring myself to throw them away.

9:45
Eat breakfast at desk. State at bottle of Ginseng extract, as is shudder-inducing. Rethink plan to replace Diet Coke addiction with herbal infusions.

10:00 to 10:10
Fiddle with iTunes.

10:15
Admit iTunes does not work. Curse school district for making me use a Mac (I'm a PC!)

10:20
Arrange desks into pairs. Then rows. Then groups of three. Then groups of three-in-a-row. Panic over how far away the back row looks from the front. What if all my kids are blind and can't see the board from there? What if by putting them so far away have started an unstoppable chain of events that forces 6-12 students into becoming reprobate children for duration of school year by allowing them the distance required to bring out evil sides?

10:45
Remind self that my children are probably not anarchist devils. Pray that there are exactly 24 students in my classroom, as do not have space for any more desks. Also, are only 24 mailboxes built into large wooden thing taking up space in back of the room.

10:50
Organize materials by subject.

11:30
Agonize over my reading nook. Is too small for chairs and have nagging feeling beanbags are banned from classrooms. There goes my plans to turn it into a squishy-floored nook. Decide to find a brightly colored rug instead.

11:40
More agonizing. Have just realized that I have no shelf space in nook area, except for the wooden bookshelf that has been nailed to the wall and rests on top of my cabinets. Completely useless. Will probably put equally useless textbooks there to give nook an academic, London library vibe.

11:55
Drag the two large bookcases by my desk over to nook area. Just need a plant to cover the six inch gap between the back of the bookcase and the wall (stupid green tiled lip juts out from wall everywhere). Must be green, leafy, and fake as my plants tend to die by association. 

12:20
Drag suitcases of books in. Peel price stickers off covers because do not want kids to judge books by the $0.50 I paid. Second guess decision about grade range of books and put about twenty into a "too adult" pile. Shove these books in with strange green boxes. Rest of the books get divided into genre.

1:10
Realize am very late for actual job (or would be if actual job came with actual hours). Throw a few more post-it notes on parts of the wall to remind self of things in need of labeling.

1:15
Can't figure out how to lock door from inside in order to exit from unlockable back door. Leave from and lock front door and walk around entire building to get to car parked in the back.