As I said previously, I moved classrooms this year. In short, my classroom was a mess when I unlocked my door for the first time on August 15th. I had exactly four days to get it ready for students to enter. Having a blank slate is both exciting and nerve racking. My parents helped me out. You can see them putting up my alphabet. It was an exhausting task, and they bickered like an old married couple. My mom is a perfectionist and needed the M and N to be exactly in the middle. My dad worked from one side and my mom from the other, and the projector caused some major issues. In the end, it turned out fantastic. I had saved all of my fabric from my old classroom and was relieved to find out that the layout of my new room was identical, so once the fabric was found for the corresponding bulletin board, my boards went up fast and stress free. As any teacher knows, putting up bulletin boards and boarders can cause cursing and tears. I could not help but think that luck was on my side.
In the movie Under the Tuscan Sun, the main character buys a house in Italy and fixes it up. After she buys the house she says "Pick one room and make it yours. Go slowly through the house. Be polite, introduce yourself, so it can introduce itself to you." I had a very similar approach to my classroom. I split my classroom into sections and went through each section, putting things away, cleaning up after the movers. I opened boxes and organized my storage closets with curriculum and books. I put together one bulletin board at a time. If I opened a box and felt that I did not need the contents at the moment, I placed I put the box away where I could access it at the time of use. Working this way made me feel calm and organized. I was dreading going through the process, but in the end I really enjoyed it.
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