Getting Ready for Sept. 1st

Here's a couple panoramic shots of my new classroom!  Click on in it to see it full size.  It's a little small, and obviously bare at this point, but my awesome mentor was able to leave a ton of teacher supplies for me to pick and choose from.  Tomorrow I want to get some welcoming furniture for a little pseudo-reading nook.    

Today we got a chance to look at the elementary standards and performance indicators, along with UbD unit plans, and a curriculum map.  Also got a chance to sit and chat informally with the rest of the 2nd grade team - 3 newcomers and 2 ASK veterans.  I can tell we're gonna be pretty freakin' good! (that terminology works, right?) I'm the only brand new teacher, and they've been so helpful with my barrage of questions, questions concerning planning, the children, classroom set-up, 7 year-olds fasting...y'know, the usual.  

So, get this: we all share two assistants that do ALL of our copying for us, and we each get an instructional assistant to help us for about half of everyday!  The kids have specialists everyday: PE, Music, Art, Science, Arabic, and/or Religion.  That's an hour and a half to two hours of planning time everyday!  And for Ramadan the days are start later and end earlier.  After Ramadan is the first Eid and we have a week off.  Tough, I know.  (I keep feeling like I'm getting too spoiled at too young an age)

If you didn't know, the kids I'll be teaching are from affluent families (mostly Kuwaiti,American, and Canadian.  I've been told that many don't get close affection from theirparents (and probably more so from there maids), so they see school as a place to...be noticed and really encouraged and cared for.  Right now specialists are still doing admissions testing so I don't know how many kids I'll have in my class - right now I'm at 17.  There's usually a cap around 22 or so.  

Hopefully, by my next blog my classroom will be close to finished.