Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Settling In So far, the major hurdle I've had to cross at the school I now teach at, Baumholder American High School, is that I don't have my own classroom.  I don't have a place that I can set up exactly how I want and call my own.  There's no "Mr. Mauldin's room."  Instead I teach my classes in four different places.  For instance today I had my three ninth grade classes, but none of them are in the same room.  Tomorrow my three classes will be in two rooms.  It's very frustrating and requires me to constantly recheck to make sure I take everything that I'll need before I hike out to another classroom. The one bright side to all this is that I do have a "base of operations" -- a room that I can spend most of my time in and use to store stuff.  I share that room with another teacher, Radley, who has been great in trying to make me feel comfortable, even though I've taken up so much of what was just his classroom.  Up until last week I didn't even have a teacher's desk to use when I was in that room.  I had to use just a plain table and a small computer desk.  Radley found a teacher's desk for me, though, and so now I'm slowly starting to trash it.  Once it is completely messy and disorganized, then I'll feel as though I'm at home.  On a completely unrelated note, there is one downside to buying gas on base at half the price the Germans pay for their gasoline:  there's often a line.  That picture was taken today as I waited in line at Ramstein Air Force Base.  And no, that isn't smoke coming out of the car in front of me.  It was just very cold today (about 42 degrees or so when I took that photo).  I also took a picture of the trees changing into their fall colors.  The trees around here just started doing that recently.  I can see them as I drive down the autobahn home from work.  They would even be more beautiful, though, if it wasn't raining so often.  Please let it stop raining before I go to London this weekend! Completely unrelated, yet cool in its own twisted way, link: Angry teacher throws students out the window 8:31:54 PM     |

© Copyright 2005 Alex L. Mauldin.