First Look

Hello new readers!

Here's a little bit of information about myself.

I'm a 2nd grade teacher at a small elementary school in Ohio and this year (2016-2017) will be my second year of teaching.  My school has an ED unit that services students for the entire district, so we are both fortunate and very busy all the time!  There are two teachers per grade in my building so having students with severe emotional and behavioral outbursts is a given every year.  That being said, it has given me experiences that I know have made me a better teacher.  Instead of a transition into my first year of teaching it was a full-blown immediate drowning sensation at the start of the year.  I truly feel that my safe haven throughout all of it was based in my firm-rooted belief that a organization can fix everything.  Whether that's true or not, at least it helped me survive my first year and I already have a constantly evolving list of new teaching practices, centers, organization hacks, and crafts for next year.  I'm viewing this blog as a way to share all of the new projects I try out.  Think of it like a living Pinterest success vs. fail blog (haha!).  To get started, I'll share a few pictures of what my classroom looked like when I entered it for the first time.

The first view of my classroom.  I remember thinking it was... small, tall ceilings, TONS of bulletin boards, and that it had a huge non-magnetic slate blackboard along my entire side wall.  It needed COLOR!

My back wall - lots of natural light and the frames above would be great for posters, if only I was tall brave enough to reach them.  The two trapezoid tables were later taken by the district and replaced by a massive kidney table for small groups.  Completely unexpected! 

The BIGGEST BONUS of my room was that the previous teacher had retired and left tons of materials for me to use.  The saint-of-a-woman left her class library books behind for me underneath the purple butcher paper.

Behind 6 of the doors along the back wall there are hooks for the students.  This is actually a picture AFTER I used Goo-Gone to remove red and white name tag stickers that were on top of the Sharpie markers.  Someone wrote with Sharpie on top of beautiful hardwood.  It was blasphemous!  Needless to say I got that off as soon as I could and then later used a magic eraser to remove the Sharpie as well.

So, what did you think?  What did you see when you walked into your first classroom?  Leave your answers in the comments below.  Keep your eyes peeled for future posts of the transformation my classroom made throughout my first year of teaching.

Ms. Frisch