Getting my classroom ready

I cannot believe that another week has gone by. Our pre-service training started this past Sunday. Sunday morning started out with an ice breaker activity which brought me back to my CA training days at UConn. While Fawzia Sultan is a small school with only about 150 enrolled students, the administrative and teaching staff (including assistants) is quite large - over 50 people. I have been doing my best to learn and remember the names of the teachers and assistants. The director was smart and had us all wear name tags which has been a huge help.

This week has been a blur of meetings, paperwork, and trying to get organized. As I said in an earlier post, I have been asked to teach 4th grade. When introducing myself and the grade I will be teaching at my first departmental meeting, all of the teachers and assistants save two or three gasped and said, "oh no!", "those kids are awful", and "you are going to have your hands full". I have the largest class in the elementary school - 8 boys. I have been working on pronouncing their names. Most of them are on Behavior Intervention Plans and several have been diagnosed with emotional disturbance. We had a meeting with all of the specials teachers, the school psychologist, as well as the third grade teacher and assistant from last year where we went over each student's needs in depth. While most of the grade meetings took 15-20 minutes, mine lasted a bit longer.. lasting over an hour and cutting into another teachers scheduled time. Although it was a bit overwhelming, I am looking at this as a challenge and opportunity to put the last 17 years of my schooling to the test. I have a wonderful assistant who is as excited about this year as I am.

Cleaning, organizing and arranging my classroom has been a ton of work but so exciting. I have been taking pictures throughout the process which are posted with my other two albums. The last teacher who had my room was a bit of a pack rat which has had its ups and downs. While it has been a lot of work going through the shelves and drawers and tossing out things that I will not use, I have also found some really great treasures. She left me five or six pillows which as allowed me to create a little reading corner for my kids. Unfortunately due to computer problems I have yet to read and review my students' IEPS (individualized education plans). I was able to log on from another teacher's computer and was able to get an idea about some of their ability levels. It looks like I will be teaching two separate language arts and math lessons per day - the grade levels of my kids range from 2nd to 5th. Although I am both tired and a little overwhelmed, I am so excited for this year to begin.

Our first day of school is Monday. We are starting on our shortened days schedule for Ramadan. This means that instead of teaching from 8-2, the students are only in the building from 9-1. Many of my fourth graders will be fasting with me. I will be sure and write again once school begins to share what my first few days are like and give you some more information about Ramadan.

I really am enjoying Kuwait. I have made some friends here, fellow teachers who live in my apartment building. The two women that I spend most of my free time with will both be teaching in the high school. They are both retired and have worked in Kuwait in previous years. One woman is from New Zealand (with such an excellent accent) and the other is from Canada. We went out to City Center a few days ago which is this big shopping plaza where many local Kuwaiti people go. It was very different from the two malls I went to last week which have very high end stores and boutiques. City Center is filled with a really great grocery store and tiny little shops where you can purchase things for 100 fils (I don't know the exact conversion price but know its really inexpensive.. 1 KD is a little less than $4 USD so you can do the math - good thing I am using a scripted math program for my kids!). The grocery store is located on the second floor of the building while the cashiers are on the bottom. I know it sounds confusing but the way you get your cart down to the cashiers is on a moving walkway ramp. At first I thought they were escalators but then saw someone with their shopping cart full of groceries on their way down the ramp. It is the neatest thing! Somehow the cart wheels just lock in place and it doesn't roll anywhere.. I held onto mine for dear life because I could just see it rolling down the ramp and running someone over. The woman from Canada and I have also tried to get into the routine of talking nightly walks for exercise and to get out and see our surroundings. I am getting a little more comfortable walking on the side of the road.. Kuwait doesn't really have sidewalks so you usually end up walking right up close to the shops or on the side of the road. I will try and remember to take my camera with me next time I go - there are so many things that I am fascinated by and would like to share.

I hope you are all doing well. I would love to hear from you. Thank you to all who have left me comments, they are a nice surprise every time I log in and check. I am also signed up for Skype so those of you who would like to chat, email and let me know so we can figure out a time that is convenient. Please keep in touch and I will do my best to update this as often as I can come up with something exciting to share.