I’ll warn you – this is a long one that is primarily school related 🙂
Anyway, as you all probably already know, July has been a whirlwind and a half for Ryan and me. On July 9, our offer was accepted on our beautiful house. Seven days later, on July 16, I am a new 2nd grade teacher at Hinckley Elementary. So before learning that I’d have to move my classroom (aGaIn!! – more on that later) from Cleveland to Hinckley, this is what my “stacks” of summer to dos looked like . . . . complete with Debbie Diller, The Sisters, 3 different planners, and Folgers 🙂
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| This is exactly my kind of productivity! |
Well, that all changed on Monday anddd my new stacks of to dos turned into a stack that looked like this . . .
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| This is my old classroom completely packed away in boxes waiting to be taken home to our poor garage 🙂 |
. . . and I knew I was going to have to take it all back home first until I got the go ahead to move it into my 2nd grade classroom in Hinckley. I can’t talk about THIS stack without a shout out to MPA super volunteer, Sandy. She happened to be at school, and after I was done packing everything and was sweating off a few inches while loading all of this into my jeep, she offered to help – and when it comes to getting a job done? There aren’t many that know how to do it as efficiently as Sandy! I worked from 9-6 from start to finish to a)pack up and b) move this home viz 3 jeep loads and I NEVER would have gotten it all done without her help. I know she won’t see this, but THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU Sandy 🙂 You are ridiculously appreciated.
Once all of this was back in my garage in North Royalton, I got the call from my school that my room was cleaned and ready to be moved into! Time to load up the jeep AGAIN!! . . .
Side story for you – Allow me to tell you about my secret annual hobby called “moving my classroom”. This will be my 7th year teaching (?!?!) and I must enjoy moving my classroom – here’s why:
Year 1 – I moved into my new classroom at the start of year 1
Year 2 – I moved OUT of my classroom at the end of year 2 to be a literacy coach
Year 3 – I moved back IN to my classroom at the end of year 3 – I missed my firsties and JGap 🙂
Year 4 – I must have been tired this year – I STAYED PUT! 🙂
Year 5 – Toughest one of all – I moved out of JGap at the end of year 5:( oh and by moved out, I mean I moved my classroom one jeep load at a time to our 1 bedroom apt in Akron. And if you’re thinking “oh, she probably means to her garage”? No, no, no… I actualllly mean that that stack from above TIMES 2 was in our 1 bedroom apartment in Akron. Here’s the proof…
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| Yeah. That’s just ONE corner. I’ll spare you (and myself) from having to look at the others. Holy cow. |
Back to the moving story . . .
Year 6 – Moved my classroom from my Akron garage to my North Royalton garage and THEN to Menlo at the start of Year 6. AND at the end of year 6 – I moved AND set up my firstie classroom to the Kinder classroom across the hall (with the help of the fabulous CoTimFemProd<3) as I was going to be teaching Kinder next year!! Geesh!! Are you tired yet?
Year 7 – Already, I have moved it from Cleveland to North Royalton AND from North Royalton to Hinckley ANNNDDDD long story short, I’ll only be in this room for 1 year and I’ll get to move it to a new (nicer!) room NEXT YEAR!!
Ashley Schroeder – BS in Elem Ed – MA in Ed – HC (Holy Crap) in Classroom Movement
SRSLYYYY (j.rich, i thought it’d be appropriate there?!?) Whew. The GOOD news is… Ryan helped me to get moved in yesterday . . . Here’s how it went.
I knew I only had a half day to work due to an appointment in the early afternoon, so I had small, attainable goals for myself, knowing I would be able to work a lot more on it all next week. My expectations were low . . . anywayyy, by 8:00, we had everything carried in and here’s where it starts:
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| stacks |
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| stacks |
Back corner to the right in the picture above is where I’m patiently waiting for my teacher desk to be. The teacher before me didn’t have one (insert anxiety levels rising here), soooo I’m waiting it out until mine is delivered 🙂
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| and more stacks! |
Sooo that’s where I was around 8:00. Goal was to try to figure out where everything was going to go (cabinet/shelf wise)
Here are the insides of the ONLY shelves in my room. That’s right. Not one stand alone book shelf. (Don’t worry I bought some at Big Lots yesterday:) )
SHELVES BEFORE
AFTER
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| My read alouds/poetry/science and social studies books 🙂 |
Don’t worry – the ugly/faded paper and borders come down bright and early Monday morning 🙂
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| Art supplies, etc AND where I can lay my display posters – they’re going to fit perfectly on that top part of this shelf. |
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| station bins/paper/math supplies |
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| my corner, which will be joined soon by a DESK… – organizational stuff up top, monthly binders on the bottom, resource books bottom right, empty shelf in the middle waiting on manuals/curriculum that aren’t anywhere in my room (deep breath) |
By 11:30 – here’s what my new “stacks” looked like!
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| This is all that’s left to put away from that giant stack by the cabinets from the before pic – and those 4 boxes go IN/ON my teacher desk that is (I’m sure) on its way 🙂 🙂 |
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| This is all that’s left from the CRAZY ugly stack above that was on/around the round table! This stack is “TO HANG”. My classroom doesn’t even resemble a classroom until there’s lots of stuff hanging from the ceiling 🙂 |
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| back right corner – – – after I get my book shelves, I’m envisioning the corner as my classroom library/holiday corner and bulletin board and then where my stool is, I’m gonna work the meeting area in some how. stay tuned 🙂 |
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| EMPTY!!!!! 🙂 |
I’m so pumped with how it all went, but even more thrilled that that was all in a half of a day! 🙂 Hopefully that means next week will go just as smoothly and before August hits, I’ll have something that resembles a classroom, a teacher desk, annnd some teaching manuals!
WHEW! Marathon of a post! Thanks for sticking it out if you did 🙂 Gotta love a good before and after blog post. More pics to come next week after projects “hang stuff”, “bulletin boards” and “classroom library” get tackled 🙂 🙂 But for now, I’m smiling that “MOVE CLASSROOM” can officially be checked off of my list!
Happy Saturday, friends 🙂 I’m off to Zumba!
