Classroom Funnies

A new school year, a new year for classroom funnies. How lucky for me that they started on orientation day?!

During the parent orientation meeting students played in their teacher's classrooms. I'm not sure how I accumulated so many children that were not in my class, but before I knew it I had a whole swarm of little boys running around my room, breathlessly giggling, playing with chess pieces and world map puzzles, and discussing world domination! Ha! What little vocabularies these kiddos have! Then, I hear one little boy from my class say to another, "So, which bacon do you like best... the pork bacon or the beef bacon?" Crack up! I'd never known such a creation as beef bacon even existed before coming to Dubai... and quickly learned there was a reason it was so unknown... it's nasty!

Today, the kids were working in groups creating posters about active listening. As I circulated the room I noticed one group of boys were drawing aliens on their poster, instead of people. I commented, "Oh wow, so aliens use active listening too?" "Yeah," they all answered without looking away from their coloring. "That's a really beautiful illustration." I added. Then one little guy (who I am sure will provide me with countless fabulous quotes) leans back and eyes his work smugly and says, "Yeah, it's true art for the galaxy." Say what?! Love it!!!

Jenni's New Classroom

Another school year, another chance to start this blog up and keep it going! Seriously!!! I really miss recording our day to day events on here. I've been looking back through old entries, giggling about special moments and experiences from our daily life. I was even thrilled to have the not-so-special moments recorded! I then sadly realized that many of our important experiences from the past year went unrecorded, and have now slipped away from our memories. We love our life- even the simple every day tasks- and I want to make sure that we hold onto and preserve even the smallest, silliest moments. I need to stop worrying about the quality of our snap-shots, or whether or not I feel my writing is creative or witty enough. I just need to make sure I take the time to jot down the details...period!

Today was the first day back to school. Last year we packed up our classrooms, eagerly anticipating the move to the sparkly new Barsha campus, only to find out that the elementary building was no where near ready! So, we ended up back at the Jumeira campus. However, instead of returning to our old classrooms, we are now using the former middle and high school buildings. The elementary building is already occupied by another international school, and we will be sharing the campus for the next few months. It felt so strange to be back to our old campus, yet not have access to the elementary building.

It was so exciting reuniting with our friends and colleagues! I've never felt more attached to our school and Dubai than this year. Returning this fall really felt like a homecoming. After a morning of meetings, we were given time to work in our classrooms, and I couldn't be more thrilled about mine! Check it out!!!



I was given the old middle school drama room- complete with a stage!!! How awesome is that?! The room is huge, has tons of storage, and the stage will be a wonderful reading area (I'm sure we'll use it for performances as well!). I'm not sure I even want to move to the new campus now!

Here are a few more views of the room. We've already made quite a dent on all the boxes!
This is a view from the door...



The view from the corner where my desk will sit...



Just testing... =)



So, all in all, a great start to the year!


And, because I love my Miller cat OH SO much, I thought I'd include a cute little image of him! We pretty much hibernated all weekend to get over our jet-lag. Not sure what Miller's excuse was...