the countdown.

It's just after ten in the morning, and I'm sitting on my bed building chemical models out of a kit I've had since college that was handed down to me from my older sister. It's a simple, plastic ball-and-stick kit, but for now it'll do. I figure I'll decorate an empty shelf or two with some base pairs and ligands, if only because they're big and complicated-looking.

As the last days of summer count down, I'm getting really excited about decorating my room. My room has two computers along one wall, which I'm dubbing the Simulation Center (a recent development, stemming from some great simulations I found online last night) and the walls of which I'll eventually decorate with printed snapshots from students' work. Up near the front of the room I'm going to have a Feelings Barometer, which is something I learned about at a seminar last week. It's a chart where the kids plot how they're feeling that day, on a scale of -5 to +5, as they enter the room. It'll allow me to judge the mood of the class that day as well as be clued into any issues I might need to address. I'm also leaving room for concept maps and two different word walls, one for chemistry vocabulary and one for greek and latin roots/prefixes/suffixes that we encounter throughout the course. In the next week I'm going to be shopping for posters and models as well.

It turns out I'm only teaching four periods of chemistry, which is an enormous weight off my shoulders, and why I'm able to concentrate on making my room subject-specific. As a new teacher, I feel really lucky that I have my own room, a fully equipped lab, and the ability to focus on one course. I think the catch will be the discipline issues at my school, but I'm putting a lot of thought into how I'm going to conduct my class in the first few days to try to head off a lot of preventable issues. I have a lot of planning to do, but also lots of energy with which to do it. We'll see how it goes! The countdown begins: 9 days.