Well, here we go: a new blog for a new classroom (third year in a row!), a new Principal, and a new subject or two (U.S. History and prep for an upcoming Humanities class in 2017). Good thing I like change. I suppose I could have stayed in my classroom from last year, but “the portables” are where they tend to stick the new teachers and it is definitely far from civilization. I opted to move to civilization and close to my peers, even though it means moving into a classroom that is 30% smaller. I will miss the abundant space I had last year, but I look forward to staying in the same classroom for at least a few years. I also got “rolling chairs,” which I have desired for a while. They make for a more flexible room arrangement, but since this room is small, I don’t know if we’ll be able to move around too much. It’s a great experiment if nothing else. I think I’ll like the seats though, and I hope the kids will too.
Step one for me was moving out of one classroom and into another. I packed the old classroom up during the week leading to finals. At first the kids didn’t notice, but then posters started to come down. By Finals, the old room was bare and the kids really didn’t like that, but they were excited that I was moving to civilization.
I had packed in such a way that I could easily transport everything to the new classroom in just a few van loads. It was also fortunate that I could keep everything in my classroom until the new room was ready. There was no rush.
On the last day of school, chairs were moved around the campus. I had asked for rolling chairs, and there was a teacher who didn’t want hers. The classroom I was moving into had random chairs that the other didn’t want, but the classroom next to mine (currently unoccupied) had a uniform style of chair that she did want. The three locations were on three corners of the campus. The swap between the three classrooms was massive.
I did have to wait for the current teacher of my new classroom to move out. And since I was in no hurry, she had ample time to do what she needed to do. She left behind a drawer full of colored pencils and another drawer full of white board markers. Thanks! She also had a complete Mac and printer setup scheduled for pickup, but I grabbed it so my future TA could do more than just grade papers.
When she was out, I did a thorough cleaning of the place and then I planned how to decorate this new space. My first obstacle to overcome was the fact that three walls had a big conduit strip running around the wall, one wall was mostly book shelves and my most major wall had a white board on it that I never intended to use. The result was that my walls were not flat and I had three walls of posters from my last classroom. The biggest of which was a 8’ x 11’ map of the world. That map needed to be flat, so I went to the store and bought supplies to make a massive wooden frame that I could fit around the conduit and whiteboard. It was quite the custom job and I had all my major power tools on site to do it. It was an installation. The whiteboard was also magnetic, so I covered the remaining part not hidden by the wooden frame with a nice cloth and bought magnetic pins. I couldn’t do anything about the bookshelf. It was installed and carpet had been cut around it. Removing it meant a hole in the carpet. I’ll just have more books in the classroom and maybe an attractive art display (?). My posters were an issue because most were 36” and the space above and below the bulletin boards was only 33”. In order to hide the conduit (and the electrical outlets that I didn’t want kids plugging cell phones into), I extended either bulletin board frames or posters or both over the top so they would be hidden. The only outlets that remained in the classroom were for my computer, the TA’s computer and the chromecart, whenever it was in my classroom. Perfect!
I also had some unique issues like cement walls and cloth areas to put up my posters. Not everything wanted to use a stick pin and not everything wanted to use tape. I had to do a combination of both and also use gluetack. My chosen tape was “gaffer tape” which is industrial strength double stick tape usually used for carpet installation. This mostly worked, but it was sometimes too sticky and other times not sticky enough. We’ll see how long into the year some of the installation lasts.
Finally, I was worried that these mobile chairs would smash into posters and my wall map, so I have every intention of installing a wooden border along the carpet that will prevent the chairs from reaching the walls (the cleaning crew has already tested my posters and map by ramming chairs into them during carpet cleaning. I am not happy about this at all! I’ve already had to do some repairs.). I have already bought the wood, but I’ll wait until the first teacher days to install it because the cleaning crew might still clean the carpets.
Oh ya, I’ve also contracted Max to paint my door. He’ll do that during the teacher days right before school starts. On day one, I should have a freakin’ awesome classroom.