Welcome Back

Today I bit the bullet and finally made my way into school.

When I arrived, I took a deep breath, opened my classroom door, and surveyed the damage.

Oh, the room looks better than I remember, I thought to myself.

But wait! Those filing cabinet aren't mine. Those filing cabinets are the math filing cabinets. Why are they in my room? ..... Oh no!

That's right my loyal readers, for the first time in 4 years of teaching I decided to wait until the very last minute to start working in my classroom, and it apparently was the wrong decision.

It seems as though my principal decided that I was going to move to the classroom next door this year. It would have been nice had I known this oh, say, a couple of weeks ago? I certainly would have gone in sooner had I realized that my getting ready for school duties were not simply going to consist of decorating my classroom and arranging the desks.

The first thing I did was enlist the help of the secretary, who happened to be the only other person at the school when I arrived. I asked her if I was moving classrooms. She wasn't sure, but she directed my attention to the number over the classroom door. It had been changed from an 8 to a 7.

But no one contacted me. I naively told myself. If they didn't contact me to tell me I was going to be switching classrooms, certainly they wouldn't expect me to switch. The filing cabinets must be a mistake.

Deep down in the pit of my stomach, though, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one would have moved those heavy filing cabinets into my classroom if they hadn't meant for them to stay there.

So, I did what any other insane person in my situation would have done. I went into my classroom and started putting my books on the shelves. My (irrational) thinking was that when the principal finally arrived on the scene and realized I had already finished putting all of my stuff out in the room she would quickly reassess the situation and not ask me to switch classrooms.

My plan failed, however, because not 30 minutes later I saw her car pull into the parking lot. She quickly made her way to my classroom and broke the wretched news to me that I would, indeed, have to move all of my things to a different room.

My head started pounding before she even finished breaking the bad news to me.

So, yeah. If that doesn't say WELCOME BACK, then I don't really know what does. It appears as though this school year is going to be even better (dripping sarcasm) than I thought.