A beautiful mess

It’s a beautiful Friday afternoon and we are just minutes away from finishing week three of school. My students by some miracle are sitting quietly at their desks working on an assignment so I decided to quickly write a blog for the week. As I look around the classroom I see a mess. I see paper hanging from the walls in the classroom. As I am trying to get bulletin boards for each subject completed by next week because it is open house for the parents. One of my requirements is to have a bulletin board for each subject that is taught. This board needs to include topics that are discussed in the classroom along with student work. It has been a process trying to get the boards set up and hopefully by next week I will have them completed. I then look at my desk currently my laptop is sitting on top of two books and I can’t even see my desk. I have student work, notebooks, workbooks, and other random things scattered across the top. Some mornings I will clear my desk off and ten minutes into the day it is nowhere to be found between students and myself piling items onto it.

The students desk are also a complete mess books piled around them and papers hanging out of the books. Most of the time I can’t even see the tops of the desk but as long as they are doing work it does not bother me. As I look around I also see students hard at work concentrating on what they are working on. Students asking me questions and then seeing the light bulb go off when they finally understand what I am telling them. That is what makes this classroom beautiful. Even though if you were to just walk by you would think, “Wow, that teacher is so messy.” Let me tell you it is disorganized mess. As long as I know where supplies that’s all the matters because I am the only one that needs to know where it is. As long as my students are learning and understanding the concepts the mess does not bug me. That is why I think that my classroom is a beautiful mess.

In a perfect world all of my students would be speaking English and understanding the concepts that I am trying to teach them. Some days it gets frustrating because some directions or concepts get lost in translation and we all end up confused. As we were working on assignment I was thinking about how much these students have accomplished. They can speak two languages and proficiently write in two languages. As frustrated as I get I can’t even write or speak in two languages so I have no reason to be getting mad at them. They are trying and as long as they try I am happy because I can’t imagine how hard learning two languages would be.

With Love,

Abby