Making Progress

Hello again. After my stressed out post last week I thought I'd share just how much progress has actually been made in my classroom. Yes, progress has definitely been made.

By Monday morning they had almost finished the wall, except for a couple of strips that needed painting and grouting between the tiles. That was huge. By lunchtime Monday, when I had completely finished sorting out all the school supplies, the painting was done. My assistant and I then started work on cleaning the room. Yes, the cleaning staff have been working hard, so I felt that it wouldn't hurt to give them a hand, so I spent much of Monday afternoon on my hands and knees scrubbing an incredible grotty floor. My assistant very cheerfully did the same. We finished the afternoon by mopping it, and by the time I left I was happy for things to be moved in.

After a few hiccups on Tuesday, eventually the move happened, and it was almost complete by the time I went home to have lunch and work on university stuff for the rest of the afternoon. I sent my assistant home at the same time and told her to take one last day off before our official start day tomorrow. Sometimes it's actually easier to work on stuff alone while you are trying to work out what is where. All that stuff, plus trying to help my assistant be helpful would have been too much.

Wednesday morning, with the help of one of the other teaching assistants who had come in to work on her own room I brought across the last few boxes (they were pretty light). Then it was time to start unpacking and sorting stuff out. Thankfully I had labelled the boxes fairly well, so I wasn't completely digging into the unknown. By the end of the day I'd unpacked all the boxes, plus my old suitcase (taken in when I'd run out of boxes), sorted quite a bit of stuff, some stuff is even in the correct places, and I'm hopeful that by the end of tomorrow (if we don't have too long in meetings) I'll be mostly set up. Here are some photos of what my room looked like at the end of the day.

The main area of the room from the door.

The other side of the room from the door.

These are most of the boxes I unpacked. There were a few more photocopy paper boxes and some that were just not worth saving, but these ones are going to be hidden. They are behind my locked teacher storage cupboard but I'm thinking I might just find an old vinyl tablecloth to put over them to help keep the dust out and to make them more invisible.

The blue table in this picture will eventually go out into the hallway
where the girls will put their bags on top, and the boys will put theirs underneath.

These two photos show the teachers work area. Buried under all that stuff are two desks and two bookshelves.
Another of tomorrow's jobs is getting that space sorted out and everything put away tidily.

These are the top two drawers of my filing cabinet. Since I packed carefully, it was a fairly quick job to file everything.
Some of the files in the top drawer are not in the correct order  yet, because I haven't created the labels for the new students, but it's all in there and secure, so I'm happy about that.

Looking across the room from near the blue table.

These two bookshelves will house the classroom library. The books are sorted into levels or "unlevelled"
 so it should be a fairly easy process tomorrow to put them on the shelves.

Some more boxes I emptied, and some things that are waiting for homes.

Jigsaws in boxes on the top shelf, along with some games. This shelf still needs some work, but there are a few more things to be added which are currently at home, so I didn't spend too much time on it today. All those books in stacks are for the classroom library, sorted out ready to go.

 Yes, there's still quite a long way to go. Whiteboards and bulletin boards need to be installed, as do window blinds, and I need to work out how to get electricity from the door to my desk (I'll be going in search of a very long extension lead tomorrow afternoon I think.), but it is definitely taking shape. I'm looking forward to working in this room, with space to move between the children when they are working at the tables, and a bigger floor seating space. Exciting!