And the Sorting Hat Said....

My first week back at school has been a blur even without the students present. Everyone I have met has been fantastically helpful and kind. I have organized my room, hunted down desks, organized laptops, figured out keys, codes and passwords and attended all of the regular "back to school" teacher meetings.

As you can see, I have fantastic windows. Two walls of my room are windows and I manage to get full sun all day because of the orientation of the building. I have yet to turn on the lights in my room, even on the dull and grey cyclone days.

I am so very very lucky to have such a wonderful selection of storage. To the right of this photo there is a bit more storage behind the doors. The best part is, a few of them even have locks for things like calculators. The little pile of bags is what I brought in for my own use be it a few decorations and a few school supplies.

This is a photo from the back of the class of the final product. I have some quotes on the front wall. The area to the left is my own built in desk and I only finished setting it up today, but didn't think to snap a photo of it so the one below is the "work in progress" photo. It now contains all those other necessary papers for duty rotations, attendance codes and the likes.

In addition to all of that, I spent a lot of time wandering around campus to find my way around and all of the places I will need on a week to week basis. I am very lucky as my school has a whole building dedicated to Maths Courses. We have a fantastic work room and everyone is near by which makes collaboration very easy. On campus, Maths is not unique in having it's own building. Despite being the equivalent to the North American high schools, it is laid out like an undergraduate university. Each faculty has a building including dance, drama, woodworking, automotive, cooking, and fabrics. In addition to all of these buildings, we also have a large stand alone hall, tennis courts, a pool (HURRAY!!!), volleyball courts and rugby fields. There is also a lot of care given to the grounds with small "parksih" spaces around campus and a very large front lawn where the students gather for morning tea. I am hoping to snap some photos of the campus on Saturday as it will be a little quieter during the weekends. 

This is the Math building. My classroom is on the right hand side, on the second floor. You can only see the bricks of my room. 

This is the front lawn area where the students have morning tea and many of them have lunch here as well. 

 This is the library and the reading area, which is directly next door to the Maths building. 

The school runs from years 9 to 13 and each student is placed in one of four houses: Grey, Massey, Seddon, and Hobson. Each of the houses is named after former Prime Ministers or Governors. The students are sorted based on family traditions. You tend to be placed into houses where parents, grandparents, siblings or other relatives have been housed. Each house on campus is known for some sort of ability or area where the students most often excel.  I was "sorted" into Grey house which has a reputation for being musically and artistically (dance, drama, theater) talented  ... as you can see, for the teachers there were no entry level forms to be fulled out about talents and abilities before we were placed. I am not overly musically talented, but I look forward to working with a talented group of kids. 

I am sure the next few weeks will be even busies than the one I just had, but honestly, I can't wait for it all to start. I miss the kids and the math.