5 Pennies - Day 34

1st Teacher Day of the 2010-2011 School Year

1. Helped another teacher carry in personal materials.
             We teachers are a unique group of people. Our classrooms are our 2nd homes. We bring in knick-knacks, do-dobs, and thingamajigs to make the area of walls, floors, doors, & desks as our home. Trying to make the kids welcomed. So when we leave for the summer many of us take boxes out of the building - as if we are moving to our vacation house. And then when the fall comes - we bring our boxes back. I really don't know of any other profession that is like this.

2. Helped another teacher move her desks and furniture around.
             I came in a few days early and already did this to my classroom. This teacher is a little bit older, but much more wiser. As we did this, she talked about her summer and time with her granddaughter - it was a nice moment to learn about someone.

3. Gave the basketball coach a basketball night light
             It was just something simple that I saw at the grocery store, but thought of him when I saw it. He is actually a 6th grade ELA teacher for our school - but between the November thru March months - he is also the basketball coach. Very multi-talented and extremely great teacher. Many of the kids really respect him because he talks on their level - especially the boys - which by the way are mostly hard to reach during these middle school years.

4. Helped clean up refreshments after staff meeting
             We always have a back to school faculty meeting on the first day back - you know, to go over topics that happened at the end of last school year, to go over things that happened over the summer, and then to plan goals for the up coming school year. It always makes my brain hurt because there is a lot of technical jargon. Don't get me wrong, we need these meetings - but it still hurts my head. Well to welcome the staff back, we also have light refreshments to munch on during the meeting. It was just easy to help clean up afterwards.

5. Gave my door prize to someone else
             There was a particular staff member who was really looking forward to a particular item on the prize table at the staff meeting. Oh yeah, we also have door prizes lotteries at the end of important staff meetings. Anyway, my name was one of the last ones that was called and this other staff member was getting discouraged about not winning. So I picked the prize that they wanted and gave it to her. I really didn't need any of the prizes anyway because I had plenty of supplies in my own classroom.