When I was substituting here at Morristown-Beard in the spring, Jodie Miller, the head of the department, came to me and asked me if I could manage teaching in the computer lab, once it was converted to a classroom. This is the general layout.



A few things to note: Those black dots are immovable structural pillars that create a dead space that cannot be taught across. If I put the kids on one side, I must teach on that side as well. Jodie also is moving from one classroom to another and needs a department-head office, so we agreed she could carve up a piece of the room for herself, and we decided upon this plan.



This hinged upon the removal of the tech closet, and the seating arrangement would be cramped for 14 students, but we absolutely had to have 14. Construction comes, headed by the groundskeeper Bob Rivello, and they do very little we asked for.



I suspect that instead of ruffling the feathers of the tech department, he made the decision to leave the tech closet as is. That meant that the door to my room now has to be the door to Jodies room, and he needs to put a door to my room somewhere else. That somewhere else is where the blackboard was supposed to go. When I made this image I had no idea what we were going to do, but Jodie and I have since moved some desks in to see how we could make it work, and we came up with a workable solution: The blackboard is going to go opposite where it was planned, on the East wall. My desk and bookcase will go behind the pillars, and the desks will be in clusters of two on each side of a wide central aisle.

This is all assuming that Bob and the fire inspector don't nix it before school starts. I am also very frustrated with how slow furnishing the room is going. We are now two and a half weeks out from the beginning of school, and there are no desks, not blackboards, no teacher's desk, nothing. Just a new carpet. They haven't even installed a new light switch (the old one is now in Jodie's office).