Classroom Digs

Hey y'all! It's day 2 of Teacher Week '13 hosted by Blog Hoppin'. I'm not allowed back into my classroom until next Monday (don't tell anyone, but I'm going to try to sneak in Thursday before our AVID party shhhh) and I never really had the energy to fully organize/decorate my room this past year. It's hard being hired 2 weeks before school starts! Consequently, I only have pictures from the very first day I laid eyes on my room. I hope to completely revamp it and get that posted for y'all by the end of next week. I definitely do not want another year of almost completely blank walls!

The view when you look in. You can see that I had already bought some things to start organizing my front table. I kept the desks in groups most of the year. The previous teacher left behind the giant lectern he built, so I spraypainted it purple and used it for storing papers I needed that day, the notecards I used for cold calls, and other various things.

Better view of the front table. I kept supplies for the kiddos in bins. Those buckets became table caddies for materials groups would need that day (holla at the Target dollar spot!). I used the square bins to keep every student's folder. They could keep notes and materials and I passed back papers to them instead of wasting time passing out papers in class. This year I bought some milk crates and will use hanging folders because those bins made it near impossible to flip through the folders. I put up schedules, memos, and my assignment trackers on my cute little bulletin board :)

Better view of my groups/2 of my 3 GIANT windows. The windows are great, but I wish I had more wall space instead of so many giant windows. You can also see the bookshelf that housed the partial class sets of the books I used and other random books.

Probably the least cluttered my desk looked all year. I have plans to make some cute supply holders out of cans. I also want to see if I can get those filing cabinets moved out as they are full of really old worksheets and I don't really keep that many paper copies of my materials.

So, yeah. Lots and lots of work ahead. I have college swag, AVID swag, and geography/history swag to put up and finally get my classroom looking like learning is happening. I think I'm going to use the small section of corner wall between 2 of my windows to create a fridge where I'll hang super awesome work just to brag on some kiddos. I've started a post card collection because my teacher bestie Mia is a genius and I'm jumping on board with her idea, so those will be hanging from my ceiling.

Here's the whole week of topics if you're interested. Don't forget to link back on Blog Hoppin'!