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September 01, 2005
okay, first *week,* then.
that e-mail i sent my classes about that room? the one wherein i told them everything that had been told to me, like a trusting fool? yeah. i trusted the wrong people, the ones working in the building who i thought likely to know their way around it. turns out the registrar was right, there *was* a 147.
i only found this out, however, after conducting my first class, or at least the first 45-minutes-or-so of it, after which i let them go, in a hallway/lobby because the only room we could find was 149 & somebody else was scheduled to be there. we did find a few other locked, unlabeled doors, & it later turned out, somewhat miraculously, that 2 of those doors led into the same overheated little room with something less than the 20 desks the class requires & a chalkboard with one piece of chalk but no eraser, but the bonus of a piano.
there's a new sign on the door now, & today it was unlocked. i'm knocking on wood in hopes it'll continue to open for us, & while i'm at it hoping for another desk or two & maybe some ventilation in the building that didn't happen to be working today but will work by next week? all things are possible, i suppose. a few of them might even happen.
to balance that, because balance is good, the students in that class are a flexible, agreeable bunch who followed me good-naturedly around when we had no room & showed personality during our summer-camp-ish name-game today, & had more to say about their reading assignment than we had time to account for.
the other group, who has a room with a thermostat that might even work, plenty of desks, a window they can see out of, 2 chalkboards, plenty of chalk, AND erasers, had to be coaxed and cajoled into saying anything at all for the first hour-fifteen i had them in there, & almost unilaterally didn't bother doing their homework because... who knows why "because." they just didn't. i think i asked them, in addition to reading (which only some of them bothered with), to write an entire sentence, or maybe two, & make a list with some words in it.
i flex my hands & pop my knuckles & get ready for a semester of ad-hoc dentistry.
Posted by ttobryan at September 1, 2005 06:01 PM