Classroom Chronicles Returns

A New Year Begins

The 2022 -2023 school year has begun. I returned to my classroom on Tuesday to set up my room and plan my lessons. When I first walked into my room after not being there since the end of June, I was shocked. My room was in complete disarray.

There were tables on top of each other. Chairs piled up in one corner. My posters were taken off the windows. Other materials were stuffed under the windows. It was a mess!

I spent all of Tuesday reorganizing my room. I soon learned that most of my stuff was in good shape. But of course, there were things missing. The main thing was my posters that had been attached to the shades in the back of my room.

The shades are big, dirty, and old. They have been used every year for I don’t know how long. When I first acquired the room five years ago, I made it a priority to decorate the shades. I hung color posters over the rips and tears. I cleaned up the dirty spots. I covered old tape marls with decorations. The shades were transformed.

I had to do it all over again on Tuesday. My poster of Africa — is gone. The posters of my favorite movie, Black Panther, are gone. My posters featuring Miles Morales — are gone. My DC Justice League posters — are gone. They even took down my posters of Black kids doing amazing things! I was devastated.

Fortunately, a container of old posters had not been thrown away. In the large box were a variety of posters. There were art posters. There were vocabulary posters and writing posters. I had replacements which eased the pain I felt over my lost posters.

I also ordered some posters from Amazon. And I plan to pick up some posters from Five Below. They have a lot of anime posters which will help replace the ones that were taken. This is a lesson for me. At the end of the year, remove the posters from the shades and store them in a safe place. I don’t want to keep paying money to replace posters!

I was able to have my classroom 90% ready by the end of the day. I was exhausted and my body ached. Wednesday was professional development day with a little classroom set-up time. I didn’t look forward to that.

But that’s my next story.