Friday, August 22, 2008

New School - Pre-Kid Days

I'm lovin' it. It ain't G-Hall at Lowery, but it's going to be a good year.

Uh, I have a designated classroom budget from the campus. Oh, and I have a designated classroom (curriculum) budget from the District. Fifteen years into the program, and someone has decided that I might be trusted to figure what I need most in my classroom. Kowabunga! Buffalo World!

I got my hands terminally dirty today . . . and I'm not through. The senior guy downstairs in my department taught this program fourteen years ago. Then the guy next door between us had it for a couple of years, then an anonymous guy had it, then the guy I replaced had it for six or eight years. Follow that? OK. I'm cleaning stuff out of all manner of closets, cabinets, and file drawers . . . and I found brochures promoting the class from the first guy on the list - fourteen years ago! tucked in cabinet - forty or fifty copies of the stuff. And parts and pieces of drawing boards and tables and equipment that have been landfill and recycled into Japanese Zero fighter planes. My favorite is the wall cabinet that was chained shut with a combination lock on it. I phoned my predecessor to ask what was in the cabinet and if he remembered the combination. He replied, "You know, I just used to pull those doors open and peer into the crack." Uh . . . I borrowed the boltcutters from Robert the Construction Tech guy next door. That cabinet had dried ink, dried tape, broken tool parts . . . it's empty now.
People I don't know yet have stopped me in the hall to thank me for opening the blinds on the west wall. Uh . . .

I'm gonna have a good time.

I asked Robert if he'd build me (have his students build me) a stand-up window box to go under my west wall windows for daffodils, irises, gladiolas . . . you know, bulbs . . . "Draw it up; give me the plans; I'm visual." Learning experience time: my kids draw it; his kids build it. Bofus plant it. Everybody who comes in the west (back) doors gets to enjoy it. You gotta love it.

More later; taking Kathryn to the movie. IOUSA - documentary.

2 comments:

Kelli Nørgaard said...

not only are U gonna have a good time, but every kid fortunate enough to have HARDAGE on his schedule can say the same....

HOLMES said...

So glad you're gonna plant those bulbs. It just ain't Hardage without them.