Vidalia Lower Elementary teacher turns Library into classroom
Published 12:00 am Tuesday, August 17, 2004
One thing’s for sure &045;&045; Kristin Brown’s first-grade class at Vidalia Lower Elementary won’t have a shortage of reading materials to keep them occupied.
When Brown, formerly a sixth-grade teacher in Jonesville, took a teaching job with the Concordia Parish School District, she originally thought she’d have a totally different classroom and would be teaching second grade.
Instead, she found out she would be teaching first grade.
And then, due to roof repairs scheduled for the school’s first-grade wing, she found out she would have to hold her classes in the school’s library for the first six weeks.
Think Brown feels a bit inconvenienced? Think again. Instead, she is making the best of her new surroundings and focusing on the positive.
On Sunday afternoon, Brown had half of her new space fixed up exactly like a regular classroom &045;&045; with a few necessary modifications.
When faced with a lack of free wall space, Brown simply used paper clips to tack her posters of the alphabet, the planets and other facts onto the library’s mini-blinds.
Part of the librarian’s desk was cleared off to make way for the teacher’s books and supplies.
And with no chalkboard or dry erase board available, Brown simply called on some craftsmen to cut her a square of Formica she sat on an easel to make her own dry erase board.
Next to the &uot;library&uot; sign outside, Brown tacked up bee name tags, as well as letters to form the message &uot;I bee long to Mrs. Brown’s 1st grade class.&uot;
Brown had worked on modifying the room for days, especially since her time before the Thursday start of school will be taken up with two days of new teacher orientation and a parent-student open house on Wednesday.
The way Brown sees it, she has one of the fanciest rooms in the school, with two computers, a few overheard projectors and, of course, all the books.
&uot;I figure, if they finish with what I have for them to do,&uot; she said, &uot;I can always have them read a book.&uot;