Seven Weeks

School starts seven weeks from today. My summer vacation is almost halfway over. I try not to think about how little time I will have to set up my classroom. I understand that there are multitudes of teachers that cannot get into their classroom during the summertime. My hat goes off to you. Up until this year, I have always had access to my room within a week of school getting out the previous year.
Now, all my supplies are crowded into countless boxes and bins, awaiting that glorious day when I can move it from one school to the next.

My classroom is coming along. I was able to tour the school yesterday. The outside doors are in and the construction crews are now concentrating on the rooms and the part that we get to see.
The layout of my classroom is almost identical to the layout of the classrooms in my previous school. This makes it nice because I have the same amount of storage, the same amount of wall space, the same amount of whiteboard surface area. There are several exciting changes that we will receive that I am stoked to show you...when I can move into my currently unfinished classroom.

One final note before we break into the pictures: (Normally I abhor it when bloggers mention this, but I have a specific reason why I am mentioning this.) The picture quality is not great because...no windows. That's right. I have zero glimpses of the real world from inside my classroom. Unless I stand at the door and the teacher across the hall from me has her door open with an unblocked view straight outside. I do, however, have four awesome mini skylights.

My room is green this year! It sure beats maroon/brown. I love the color. I also kinda want to borrow that scaffolding because my husband and I need to paint a very tall wall next to our staircase.

My lovely wall of storage. The cubbies are different from my last school. I believe we only had 30 cubby holes last year. Count 'em up. 35 slots. One month I had 36 students, but then someone moved and I felt like I could breathe again.

Here is my bookcase and tall cabinet with a mirror. You know I need to look good while I wrangle 10-year-olds.

Last year I had some open space (no door) between the tops of the cubbies and the cabinets. This way it will look cleaner.

One more view of my green wall! One fantastic reason why it is good to have an inside classroom is that I do not have radiators. The classrooms on the outside of the building have radiators that flank that wall on either side of the cabinets.
(The wall to the right will have two whiteboards and a cool little piece of technology. It is not a smart board.)

Let's take a look at my counters. Green again. How lucky can I get to have green everything. I might just have to retire after this classroom because she is so beautiful.

I have two of these against my back wall. They house my classroom library.

And for some reason I felt drawn to my sink yesterday. Here is my sink. I hate kids getting drinks during class. I'll have to rethink my policy in the next seven weeks. She's a looker. I just hope the water doesn't taste gross.

I never thought I would go through the process of watching my school being built and counting down the days to when I can move in because my room doesn't have a ceiling yet. They are estimating that we can get in a week before school starts. I was chatting with my previous principal a week ago and mentioned that fact. He shrugged, "I guess some teachers can get ready in that period of time."
True, true.
It will be a first for me.