My "Other" Room

Our house has been ignored so far this week, and will be again tomorrow, because I am hard at work in my new classroom. You'd think that school starts next week if you came by our school--today, there were at least a dozen teachers there along with the principal, secretary, and janitors. Why? Well, we aren't allowed into our classrooms in the summer until they clean and wax the floors. They even empty the furniture out of the rooms into the hallway, then put it back and do the halls. Our school wasn't finished until the end of last week. Then, the building staff (principal, secretary, and janitor) who have to be there to open the school for us to work are off for the month of July, until we start back the last week of the month. That leaves us with this Monday through Wednesday to do anything we need to do, which means everything for those of us coming back/new to the school or switching rooms.

On Monday, I dumped the contents of every shelf, cupboard, cubby, desk, you name it into the middle of the room.

Then, I trashed the blue and purple mimeographs from the 80s, the 1971 set of World Book Encyclopedias, and the tattered remnants of textbooks from the 1960s-1990s (well, actually, I boxed those because the school wanted to keep them?!). I also had the wonderful janitor remove a filing cabinet someone had left food in that destroyed the drawer. Finally, I cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned. I went through two full bottles of spray cleaner, two rolls of paper towels, three emptyings of the school vacuum, and went home COVERED head to toe in dirt, dust, and grime. But now it's cleaner.

Today, I deconstructed the heater. Yes, I took it completely apart, off the wall and all. I didn't take a before picture, it was too disgusting. I donned the face mask and extra long gloves I brought with me and vacuumed (killed one school vacuum on it... whoooops... it was that bad), dusted, and picked up all the assorted disgusting things that were in it. It shocked everyone that hadn't seen me do this in my prior room, because it was EXTREMELY gross and took a REALLY long time. However, for children with allergies and asthma? It simply was non-negotiable that this filth needed to be cleaned.

Once I finished that up around lunchtime, I ran out for a snack and some paint. The chipping institutional-green paint made me feel like I was in a run down hospital waiting room, not in an exciting place for children to learn. My colleagues weighed in on the color options, and it will be blue and green. So far, it's blue.

Before:

After:

And before:

And after:

Yes, it's still not lovely. But it's clean, it's bright, and it's child-friendly (I think). It also says "nice elementary school" (to me) which is super-important to me: I want my students to have an excellent education--in a nice space--like better-off students in other places get. I should probably get a request onto Donors Choose asap to make sure we have some decent supplies, dictionaries... so that can happen! But I am well on the way...