Slow Going

I've been going in to work for a couple of hours each day this week. First, I can't tell you what a luxury it is to be able to go in before school starts and get a little work done. At my old school this just wasn't allowed - in a school where we all boxed up our possessions in June knowing that we would ALL be assigned to different rooms in September. You can imagine the madness in those two days we had to prepare for the return of the students, with at least half of the first day spent standing around waiting to get keys, sitting in faculty meetings and/or attending some so-called "PD."

Now I get to leisurely re-arrange my room, make sure all my technology is hooked up and working, organize supplies, and take care of those house-keeping chores that there never seems to be time for during the year. All the drawers in my room (all 54 of them!) had loose handles that had to be tightened, two screws per handle. I had to find all the keys (again, all 54 sets) and re-label them in a more user-friendly way. I've had to clear all the textbooks out of my supply cabinet where they were locked all summer, to make way again for my supplies, which were in boxes. I still need to clean some grafitti and gum from the tables, to the extent possible, before school starts. That should be enough boring detail to give you a sense of what's been going on, a part of the tedious and decidedly un-academic aspect of teaching that is underappreciated by the general public - it's not considered "work" in the contractual sense and no one seems to want to actually pay us do do it, but it doesn't get done if I don't do it myself, at least not in a timely mannner. It's also time consuming and sometimes back-aching - those biology textbooks weigh a ton.

I still don't know what to do with all those drawers. I'd like to put materials in there that students need, but I can't figure out a practical way to do it so that the materials are both secure and accessible. The only model I have is my old chem lab, where we bought our own padlocks and had our own individual assigned drawers. That won't work for me. I may end up simply using most of them as my own storage spaces and keeping them locked up throughout the day. I certainly need the space.