Room 304

The room is rectangular. With two long tables pushed back to back to form a nice square. At one end, mounted triumphantly on a raised platform, stood a long table covered in hand bells. A red clock hangs on the wall by the door. There are windows too, I think. And a whiteboard, with blue scribbles on it. The walls are plastered with homemade posters and pictures, and the only other blue thing in the room (other than the scribbles) is a low table standing below the whiteboard. It is shaped like an octagon cut in half. The table, not the whiteboard.

This is my classroom. Mine to rule and regulate, divide and conquer... for exactly an hour and five minutes every Tuesday and alternate Thursday.

Now change the picture a little. Separate those tables and set them facing the white board. Perhaps pull the blue table away from the wall. Insert four children enthusiastically ringing the hand bells. And finally, imagine me taking said bells away and scolding the children to their seats.

Can you see it?

I could.

I stepped into the room, curious to see it for myself, and the first thing I thought of were those hand bells. I'm going to have a time keeping my 7th graders' eyes off them. (Certain other teachers will have a worse time with the 2nd graders in that room, but thankfully that's his problem, not mine. (but I will pray for you, Tyler)) It will be a challenge at first, but I will have order in my classroom.

I looked about me as I tried to imagine the rest. Wyatt running in slightly late. Amanda, Britton, and Carly studying their books. Myself gesturing wildly about how stubborn the church was when it came to Ptolemy. I smiled to myself and glanced at the clock. In one week, this will all have come to pass, I'm sure.

The smell of rain seeped in through the windows in the room down the hall, and the felt blanket beneath the bells kept a scent of dust in the air. The two scents mingled and became what could only be the smell of, yes, school.

This is my classroom. And it represents "school" well.