Preparing to Move

I suppose I should start off with a quick introduction. My name is Laura, and I just accepted my first teaching job for the 2012-13 school year. I will be teaching 5th grade mathematics in a small town in northern Missouri. I'm so excited and so nervous about the prospect, but can't wait for things to get started. I graduated Fall 2010 with a degree in Elementary Education. My minor was Mathematics, and I have my certification in Elementary 1-6 and Middle School Mathematics 5-9.

Things have been pretty wild this summer. I spent seven weeks in Southeastern Missouri working at a Girl Scout camp. It's a fantastic place to work and I love spending time down there making a difference in the lives of girls from all over Missouri. My two camps are in some gorgeous spaces:

 This is the view from the front porch of the dining hall at Cherokee Ridge. It's really close to Sam A. Baker state park. I had mostly older girls this summer, including two units of advanced horseback riding. My favorite part of the summer here? I got to go on two awesome trail rides with my girls and really got to know them well.

 This is a shot from the front of the dining hall at Latonka. This one is on Wappapello Lake and has some gorgeous feel to it. It's an old CCC camp, so a lot of the architecture has that pretty feel to it. One of my co-workers commented that it felt like she was on the set of The Parent Trap. I had some younger girls (4th/5th grade) this time around, but they were all fun groups. I ended up with the youngsters mostly because I am a ropes facilitator for the council and had groups who were there to play on the ropes course. The last week of the summer was by far my favorite, however. I got to go geocaching and teach girls how to geocache all summer! If you stick around long enough, I'm sure you'll find out how crazy I am about my random sport/hobby/activity.






So that's about it for how my summer went. Back to school! I went up this past Tuesday to try and find a place to live. When you're moving 3 hours away from home, it kind of puts a kink in plans. We found an apartment in town and in between doing happy dances about the upcoming year, I've been packing up my stuff.

I'm really excited to get my apartment settled, but my biggest worry is what to do with my classroom. The 5th and 6th grade classes are all in a trailer in the back of the building. So I've got a lot of fun to try and figure out what to do with this space. I'll post pictures and see if anything fruitful comes of it.

 View from the back side, near the closet.

 View from the computer space in the back of the room.

 View from where my desk is currently sitting, facing straight back.

 View from my desk toward the classroom door.

 The items I have behind my desk; a filing cabinet, a podium, and a bookshelf.

So what would you do with this space? I've got a VERY blank canvas and zero ideas. I've also got no clue how I'm setting up my schedule or even what the overall schedule looks like (or my kids names, or anything at all pertaining to school). Help!!!