Thursday, February 17, 2011

It's only taken 2 1/2 years.

Well, this marks the end of an era for my school.  No longer will my school, one of the largest (and apparently wealthiest) schools in the city, be one of the few schools without a designated English classroom.  Finally, after two years and several annoyed principals and vice principals later my school is giving me a classroom.  In a normal situation this would not seem to be that important but in my case, it's important to me, and also a little bit of a ridiculous story. 

My quest for a classroom started almost upon arrival at my school.  When I realized that I would be one of the few teachers without a designated classroom I decided to try and obtain one.  My first chance came during my first winter break.  A new school was opening across the street from my school and my school was losing a lot of teachers and students.  Not only were we downsizing, but we were downsizing in a grandiose fashion.  We lost close to 40% of our students and 30% of our teachers.  However, that first winter is was not to be.  My school decided it was more important to get rid of some portable buildings we had procured and to give bigger offices to everyone.  Sadly I was left out in the cold.

My second chance actually came that summer, when my school underwent an extensive remodel.  Once again there were open rooms which I could have possibly used but they were designed to be other things.  The last chance I had before this break was almost one year ago today.  My school once again was downsizing due to the fact that the new school across the street was not yet at full capacity.  We were lost 10 teachers and were only getting 4 teachers in return.  Considering everyone had a great office by now I figured I was going to be next in line to get a classroom.  I even had the head teacher of 6th grade pleading my case to the principal.  Yet, once again I was denied.  The principal had decided that all those empty classrooms would be better put to use for after school programs.  Including the after school English program.  While I trudged on classroomless the after school programs which only needed the rooms for 3 hours a day (after I finished teaching nonetheless) all received their own classrooms. 

This winter, I went in with severely tempered expectations, and I had not had a chance to start working my new principal for a classroom yet.  However, at a celebratory dinner (graduation) my new principal surprised me by saying that he was promising me a classroom.  I have to admit that I did a little bit of a happy dance once the information processed through the partial alcohol induced cloud.  Yay, I finally get a classroom, and have even been told what classroom I will be taking over.  Now I just need to get the keys to the thing so I can set it up.  Hopefully that will happen next week, however, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided at the last second that my classroom was going to be needed for storage instead.