New School Year...New Classroom...New Me?

Yes!  A new journey will start for me soon, but as a teacher you should know my school year has already started as I am lesson planning and preparing for August already.

New school year... New classroom...New school site... New District... New everything... New start!

I am so excited and terrified at the same time that I am moving to a new district (my dream district) to pursue my English Teaching career!  I have been working for this since I got my credential... But it was a rough road getting here.  

I know some of you are going to look at this and think "You are a second year teacher, you should feel lucky that you are practically starting your career in a place you want to spend the entirety of your career."  Well yes, but for those of you who know me... I mean REALLY know me, you would know that I had an unconventional and extremely challenging first year.  Yes all first years are challenging, but mine was on another planet completely, but that is a story for another time!  For now I will talk about my moving process and the stress and joy that goes into a lovely classroom move.

As a teacher you spend more money on your classroom than most districts give you for supplies.  It is a sad, but true fact.  With that being sad I still had a lot of fun picking out my classroom colors, decor, and planning the perfect atmosphere for my students to learn in!  I did research on the best colors to help students focus and feel safe, as well as how to decorate a high school classroom to be cute, but not to elementary like.  I spent hours at the craft store and teacher supplies store picking out matching patterns and doing my best to follow my color scheme.  And I was so proud of my classroom once it was finished!  Once I decorated it and finally got it to where I wanted it to be I had a position change and had to move all of my stuff the the opposite side of the school.  You do not realize how much stuff you have until you have to box it all up and channel your tetris skills to pack it all into your car (mine being a corolla... AKA not big at all.)  Doing it once was difficult enough, and now I get to enjoy the process all over again!  But this time by my choice!

I have been wanting to work for the district I am moving too for so long that I can't wait to get my keys and get started making my classroom perfect!  I spend a lot of my free time on pintrest looking up the latest classroom trends as well as the best ways to teach my new kiddos!  Teaching isn't a career it is a life style, one that I have thrown myself into since I was given my first teaching opportunity.  I want my classroom to look good and feel safe AND I want to make sure my kids are as prepared as they can be for the next grade or whatever happens to them after high school!

In preparing to help my students succeed I have gone to great lengths to make sure my classroom is tip top shape, which means more stuff for me to move and transfer to my new class.  I should also add, my new school is not close to my previous one, so this will be a fun moving process.  Over all I am so happy I could care less about the clean up and move time.  I have a wonderful support system ready and willing to help me move! and a few elementary teachers in my family who are ready to help me organize and decorate!  And what is even more exciting is my sister is also moving to a new classroom in a month or so, so we all get to do it again for her!  I love that I have such a teacher friendly family (since a lot of us are educators) and that we all have each others back, including moving ALL of our classroom crap many times over!  Shout out to the teacher support systems for helping us with everything from moving our classrooms to putting up with our late night grading!

-Lauren Ashley