A Holiday Project

I just discovered that it's almost two months since I posted. Life has been busy. Before school officially started I kept busy getting my office sorted (still in progress) and getting things ready for teachers. I also interviewed new students, and did my best to get things moving for the new library set up. That is still a work in progress, but we are getting there. The new teachers all arrived and have settled in to their classes, as have the returning teachers. We implemented a new "house" system and on Friday had our first "house" competition. That was primarily a secondary school event, but the elementary students did wear their house colours and wrist bands.

One of the projects I hoped to do over the summer break, but just did not get to, was reorganising our elementary teacher resource room. This week I have a whole week with no students in the school, so I thought it would be a good time to get this job done. The photos will help you understand why it's a "no students around" job.

The one on the left gives you an idea of the starting point. If you look closely you will see that there is quite a bit of order to it, but there is also quite a bit of chaos and stuff in boxes that are not very clearly labelled.

At the end of last year, I talked to teachers about what they would find useful in the resource room, and one thing I discovered was that most of them went to the library looking for non-fiction books for students to use for research instead of this room. I therefore decided that the non-fiction books will go back to the library, and our levelled reading resources (which teachers are using regularly) are being moved up to this room. There were also quite a lot of resources still in either the elementary library or the secondary library which were not getting used (most likely because teachers didn't know they existed or the treasure they contained). Those resources were all brought up to the Resource Room area on Friday, and I did a little work on sorting them out on Friday afternoon. Here's what they looked like when I left on Friday about 6pm. This is in a corridor that will eventually lead to classrooms in the centre building. 

Once I finished getting most of those sorted on Saturday, it was time to start moving stuff around. First I emptied a couple of bookshelves, one in the resource room and one in this corridor. Then I went to find someone to help me move the shelves. Our maintenance man was very helpful. Not only did he help me move the two shelves that were ready to move and one of the tables out to an area that is better lit, he also helped me move stuff from one shelf to another so we could move two more bookcases. Finally he went and found another very helpful young man to bring one more shelf up from the library. Thanks guys.

Already the room is looking better. I started work organising, sorting and shelving the books, and made quite a bit of progress. I've still got a long way to go, but I'm happy with the start that I've made. Hopefully by the end of the week, I'll have all the resources sorted and the room set up in a way that will make it easy for teachers to find the materials they need (or identify what we need to get if it isn't there). Here's what is waiting for me to go back to tomorrow! Levelled readers are sorted, and as I work I'm checking for damaged books and ones that need to be replaced.

One thing I really want to do is to make sure this room does not collect "junk". I will be asking teachers to only put things back in this room that they will definitely use them again. I'm fairly confident there are people out there who could use some of the materials that I'm not putting back. The challenge will be to find those people quickly as we get the school ready for our next accreditation visit.

The photos below, and the top left one in the photo on the left, show what I still have to sort out. As you can see there is a lot of "stuff" there as well as some very useful resources. Check back at the end of the week to see the progress!

So, am I going to have a holiday? Yes, I've already had one evening out with friends at a big shopping mall. We had dinner, and then went to see "Renegade". Good movie. We also did a bit of shopping. Today I'm enjoying a day at home, until it's time to go to church. I'm also looking forward to doing a little sewing tomorrow and having lunch with a friend who lives and works on the other side of town.

Post 300 - Farewell Summer Break

This post marks a landmark on my blog. It is post number 300. I hope all those who read it enjoy the glimpses they get of my life, mostly here in Cambodia but occasionally in other places. I look forward to writing more once school resumes for the students in one week!

Meanwhile, teacher orientation and preparation week starts tomorrow.

This last week has just flown by, with most of my time focused on two tasks.

Most teachers would be familiar with taking "running records" to assess student reading. This summer one of my projects has been updating our resources for this. There's been a lot of downloading, printing, and photocopying done, and there's still some laminating and then a lot of filing to be done before that job is complete, but it is well and truly on the way. My goal is to have that job finished by the end of the week, but I am somewhat dependent on other people to get that done.

The second task was one that has saved our principal a heap of work, and hopefully will make staff quite a bit happier. The principal, one of the Khmer teachers and I made some decisions about a baseline supply list, and the Khmer teacher and I went to the markets and got some prices. Later that day I went back to the markets on my own and placed the initial order. It was a big order, and was delivered the next day. With over 2000 books to be sorted and allocated, as well as other materials, I spent most of Saturday working on it. However I'm hoping the result will be a happy principal and happy staff. It won't be everything they want or need, but it will be a starting point. We'll see what sort of reactions we get tomorrow.

So now, I've got a few jobs to do and then I'm off to bed. Need to get a good night's sleep so I can be up bright and early tomorrow. Getting excited!

When a holiday is not a holiday ...

... when the shipping container full of your Aussie household goods (and precious books) is going mouldy and has to be relocated, emptied, cleaned, bug sprayed, and then repacked! Doesn't sound like much of a holiday to me either, but that's what I'm up to this week. Last week I did a little sorting, and Monday I did a bit more, but today was the big day.

I arose at the most unreasonable hour of six o'clock this morning. Yes, I know many people rise at that time or earlier every day, but I'm on holidays and besides which it was freezing cold. How do I know, because when I went out to the car at about 6.30am there was a layer of ice on it. I actually had to pour water over the windscreen several times to get it clear. Brrrrr! That dealt with I was on my way.

On arrival I moved a few things out, and a few move down from higher positions then closed it up again. Here's the story in pictures.

The box. Note how we've had to dig out the front right corner so we could open the doors.

Rear view after the box next door has been moved. See how the base is almost buried.

The very excellent crane that did the job.

Digging out the corners to get the points where the chains are fixed onto the shipping container.

Checking the chains with slight tension just before the lift.

Off the ground!

Repositioning

In the new location. Notice the bare ground where the containers had been resting.
With the drought broken, they had sunk into the ground quite a way.

Getting the big stumps in place to hold it off the ground. With air able to circulate more freely and any run off able to get away we're hoping that mould growth will be a thing of the past.

Done!

Once it was moved, the next job was to empty it and find out just how much damage there was. Actually, it was surprisingly little, although we did find a few redbacks and quite a number of ants nesting inside some of the boxes. Some cardboard boxes need to be replaced, and there's quite a bit of mould on some of the furniture but all in all, considering I was anticipating a 6 months absence when I first packed stuff up it's in pretty good shape.

Tomorrow is going to be another big day, with the cleaning, sorting and repacking needing to be finished by 2.45pm so I can get on with my AustSwim supervised experience. I guess there's no doubt that I won't be bored tomorrow!