Set Up

I arrived in my classroom for the first time about two weeks ago.

Because I am in a Port-ah-bluh, I had to wait a bit longer for the thing to arrive. (All those lucky teachers who don't need to wait for the school to show up to get their keys. . . )

When I got into my room I saw the following:

1. Ten student desks
2. A teacher desk (locked)
3. A table
4. Two filing cabinets (one large, one small and still containing contents from previous owner.)
5. Three chairs
6. One flag
7. One cart for notebooks
8. A few random metal planks or . . . slabs or. . . things. Couldn't begin to tell you what they're for.
   

I came back a few days later and saw nothing had changed. I was leaving on a vacation with the family in a few days, though, and needed to do something to the place, so I brought in some supplies, hung up some posters, cloroxed the teacher desk, and put the student desks more or less where I wanted them to begin the rows.

Fast forward a week and the room looked identical with one notable exception:

1. Tall filing cabinet: missing.

This is a problem. I started thinking that I'd have to bring in blankets for some kind of picnic on the first day of school and imagined some very neat (if conspicuous) piles of paper for myself against the back wall in lieu of a cabinet.

After talking to the custodial staff, I managed to acquire the following:

1. A new teacher desk (containing two boxes of red pens and several loose DVDs left by the previous owner including Finding Nemo and Ice Age 2. Finders keepers?)
2. Keys for the new desk (phew.)
3. A clock for the wall (phew.)
   
4. 35 student desks
   
5. One less chair (didn't need it anyway)
6. A new large filing cabinet that does not have bars tall enough for hanging folders.
   
7. Three new stress zits of the deep seeded and painful kind. Annoying.

The large filing cabinet's malfunction is probably the biggest frustration now (aside from the facial deforming), but I don't have the heart to tell the custodians who went well out of their way to rescue the discard for me to use that the discard is likely to take up more space than it is going to be useful, but maybe I can find a way to make use of it. It can be like an extra chest of drawers for my clothes. A storage chest for the air mattress I mean to sleep on during my planning periods (kidding?). An impromptu cooler for a case of caffeinated beverages. A punishment tool of some kind?

Any other suggestions?