We have a brand new building at Trinity School. It is Brand-Spanking New and really very beautiful, inside and out.
And I have My Own Classroom, something I have not had since way back in the early nineties when I was teaching at South Fayette Jr./Sr. High School in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.
Yes, I have My Own Classroom, room 214, in the very middle of the building on the upstairs hall. I also have six new bookcases filled with many new books, a new four-drawer filing cabinet, a bank of new wall cabinets that includes a closet with a bar for which I Immediately brought a hanger from home on which I can hang my coat (when I need one, which I cannot imagine needing Ever), and a sink with new soap and new paper towel dispensers. I also have a new table at the back with new seats for three students (I know not yet what I will use this for but I will use it) and twenty-two new desks and twenty-two new chairs.
I have a brand-new electric pencil sharpener and a brand-new overhead projector on a wheeled cart. I have a brand-new wall clock with a brand-new battery, and a brand-new stapler (that has yet to see Jello) and a brand-new tape dispenser on my (you guessed it) brand-new desk.
I also have two new bulletin boards which I have already decorated with simple and thought-provoking images, and one plant in a pot that I had in my Shared and Highly Overcrowded classroom last year and that now looks Vastly Contented and even happy in this new and uncrowded and quiet space.
I am Very Pleased.
And Grateful.
The start of school has always brought a singular pleasure for me, ever since I was a child. I’ve always loved buying the new supplies for the coming year, and organizing them, and Getting Ready. A fresh beginning is a mercy, you know, in whatever form it comes.
This start of the school year is no exception, and also highly exceptional. I’ve Never Before taught in a brand-new classroom in a new building with new furniture. There’s something incredibly hopeful about it all, and untouched, and waiting. I like that my classroom is ready so early (students come in a week). I like to sit in the room and look at the empty, waiting desks, to remember and anticipate my students from last year, to pray for them and for the new ones, the ones I have yet to know.
Yesterday I got my laptop from our IT director. Unlike most of the other things, this computer isn’t exactly new: it’s the same one I had last year. There was the sticker on top: “HS Humanities,” it reads. Laura placed it before me on my desk.
“Is this the same one?” I asked her.
“Yep,” she said. “It’s the same one.”
So I opened it and turned it on, and there it was, asking me for my i.d. and password. I entered them both without hesitation, and the laptop came to life under my fingers once again, just as it did every day last year without fail.
“All your programs and documents are still on there,” Laura reassured me, and sure enough, there they were.
Tomorrow when I go in to school, I’ll pull the laptop out and get her started, readily clicking away in my otherwise silent and empty room. I’ll check e-mail and pull up some old documents, I’ll reference last year’s lesson plans and officially write up lesson plans for the first few days of school.
Yes, I love fresh beginnings. But this one has the added pleasure of Something Old to look back on: while the building, the classroom, and the furniture are new, I Am Not.
