Classroom Makeover 2015!

Our school was downsized this year. On the one hand it is fantastic news. We've been so overcrowded for the past 15 years, it was time. On the other? Lots of changes this year. Including the fact that I got moved to a new room, a lot smaller room. If you know me this is a cause for concern.

I have a LOT of stuff.

After 20 years of teaching you just accumulate things. Things you can't willing part with unless there is a tornado or they are ripped from your fingers by a giant shark. Where am I going to put all this stuff? What do you mean I won't have any handy cupboards underneath a sink to cram place my art supplies in?

Ugh.

So I braved the change and packed up all my stuff at the end of the year. I will sort through it over the summer. Right?

Well, it took forever to get into my new room. First they had to clean all the carpets. That took a really long time. I kept checking with no success. Then the day that they had cleaned my carpet I was at a staff development and was going on vacation the very next day. Then to find out that I couldn't get in  until they finished waxing the floors. Really?

Finally, finally I was able to get in there and get started. I simply had to put some desks out to see if they would all fit in this room. But this is what it looked like the first day I arrived.

A mess.

I came in for a couple of hours every day for a week to go through all those boxes. I threw out a bunch of stuff. I decided that my motto this  year was if I haven't touched it in two years, I don't need it.

The boxes were slowly being emptied and I was arranging the furniture in the room in a hopefully functional way. Can you see on the back  wall how that board is painted black and stenciled with gold? Yeah, those were our old school colors. There was also an original mural painted of a castle to go with our school mascot, the Knight. I had to paint over those with our new school colors.

 

 

 

Then I started getting more relaxed about this new year. After asking the Head Custodian for a second cabinet to store all my math manipulatives in, things were coming together. It was starting to look like a classroom.

 

 



But a problem arose. The more days I spent working in my room, the closer the beginning of the new school year approached. Which means more and more colleagues started showing up. They would stop by to chat (read help them move heavy furniture) and I started getting less and less done.

But today I was able to get to a place where I started in on the real grit of teaching. I sat down an opened up my account at Planbook.com. Look for this in a different post. It was time to seriously start looking at my daily schedule and think about lesson planning.

Here's how my room looks the day before pre-planning: