Stick a Fork in Me.

and not to be out done, THIS:

Ooohhh, it still gives me shivers.  Before we could leave for the summer we had to move out of our old classroom, get all of our junk into the new classroom, make sure to put everything away neatly and organized, and then “shut down” the classroom for end of the cleaning the custodians do over the summer.  

And, as you can tell, we have a just *alittle* junk.  As in, so much junk some had-to-be-put-in-the-hall-because-there-is-not-enough-room-in-the-classroom junk.  Whoops.

So we (my co-teacher, myself and her wonderful son that honestly volunteered to come up and help- he is a great help) worked our tails off so that it looked like this after working Tuesday and Wednesday:

(The stuff on top of the table was going home with me.)

Ahhhhh.  Much better.

The best part is that when we packed up we VERY carefully and meticulously went through and purged things we never used and put it away so it can be easily accessed.  We even “set the classroom up” with furniture before we covered and moved most of it to the tile.

This will be a HUGE help because in about 3 weeks I will be back in the room setting up the room for a four day summer school camp.  I feel like the room needs to be fully functional and set up because teachers will be there observing the classroom and lessons to see how Common Core  will be implemented in the classroom. People will want to look though all my “stuff” and I want it to look good! I have been lucky enough to be a part of a focus group (for lack of a better word) in my district and  have received LOTS of Common Core training.  In turn I have been been observed by LOTS (when it is all said and done after this summer and this school year my guess will be that close to 100 or more will have observed me this year Yikes!)  of people watching to see what Common Core looks like in action in the classroom.

My sweet custodians agreed to put my room to the top of the cleaning list.  This means that it will be cleaned before I teach the summer camp so I can REALLY set up for the next school year and leave it and not have to tear it down again to be cleaned after the camp. Which is a huge blessing, because I don’t know about you guys but I HATE putting paper over everything for end of the year cleaning. 

So, we took this as an opportunity to clean, clean, clean.  I gave away about 3 carts of stuff to a teacher that is setting up her own classroom for the first time.   I gave away all those white shelves in the hall to one of the sweetest custodians for his garage (don’t tell my hubby!), and we threw out about 9 or 10 HUGE bags of trash.   Ahhh.  It feels so good!   I bought new plastic contains so all of the containers match.  I will be adding new labels and will be taking pictures of the organized loveliness when we get closer to school starting.

Let the fun begin!!!!