One Back Room Down!

As I continue to work through my classroom, I'm taking advantage of strange times.  Like 2-hour delays.  Even though I technically had a delay too, I came in about an hour and a half earlier than necessary to get some organizing time.  Here is the insane amount of winter weather that caused the delay:

The snowflakes did get a bit larger for about 3 minutes.  This is part of the view out my classroom window.  That's our local community center next door.

Anyway, in my before pictures, you got a glimpse of my back rooms.  I am blessed with a TON of storage, but I also share.  The other room is science storage for the school (not even going there yet).  In this room, I have the shelves and cabinets underneath them.  Well.  I would, if I could clean them out.  Still working on that.  It's hard to throw away other peoples' hard work.  Most of the filing cabinets in these pictures belong to the school office manager (who has very little storage), and I have been cleaning out the remnants of about 15 years of past teachers since my mentor retired.  Sloooow work, I tell ya.  So--review the before pictures:

Ugh!  Stuff EVERYWHERE!  I am ashamed.  We sometimes test kids in these rooms during EOGs (all those separate setting kiddos have to have SOMEWHERE to go!), and I wouldn't be able to focus in here.  It's bad, because a lot of our 1:1 students have ADD/ADHD and this would NOT be an ideal setting for any of them.

And now:

I wish there was a better way to take in the entire room!  I need a different angle.  Maybe through the window in the adjoining room later...
Anyway, other than dustiness on the file cabinets and some sloppy, leaning books, I feel really good about this space.  I am going to attack those darn cabinets, but I haven't gotten up the nerve just yet.  I think I'm going to work on the visible mess in the other room first.  Then, I can do all the cabinets simultaneously.  That way, I can clear, combine, and reorganize all of the hidden goodies. 

I'm really glad I signed up for this challenge, even if I don't keep up and I don't follow directions and go in my own order.  I was one of those AIG students who ignored directions when I was in school, too.  I'm sure my teachers hated that.  I'm posting to teacher resource organization because that is what MOST of this stuff is.  Don't really know what else to call it...

My Teacher Area

So...challenges and I have issues, apparently.  I am actually making some progress toward a more organized classroom, but I am failing epically at posting about it.  This is probably because I am...ahem...several weeks behind.  With 27 students, no assistant (but I do have a WONDERFUL tutor 3 days a week), and plenty of committee meetings, there hasn't been a lot of time for me to actually WORK in my classroom.  Well, other than the obvious teaching part.

My teacher work space is not exactly typical.  As I noted before, I got rid of my traditional teacher desk years ago.  I am a clutter queen, so the less space I have to junk up, the less junky I get.  I was accumulating some paper debris and some unnecessary pen/pencil/marker mess, so I worked to streamline my storage and to put things away when I was finished with them.  Sometimes I feel like I need to clean out my desk every time I tell a student to do so.  I feel like a hypocrite when I have sloppiness hanging out everywhere and tell them to get it together!

So again--this is my before:  I really wish I could get that *#%$ TV off the wall...

And here is my after:

Sorry the picture of my red guided reading table is so dark!  I had to stay late to assess a potential new student, and it was getting to that point of day where pictures look bad, with or without flash.

I know this may not look like a big change to some, but the little changes I made make me feel so much better!  I still want to work on my shelves above the counter.  I do use a lot of the books and binders on a regular basis, so I don't want to shove the whole thing away in a dark closet, and I don't really want to put a curtain in front of it.  I think I just need to add some better bookends to hold it all together.  I might get a curtain for the shelf with the boxes of books.  I usually just access that once per unit, which I don't mind covering up.

I still have dust bunny colonies on my computer area.  Is anyone else plagued with a classroom with extreme amounts of dust?  I think it comes from the ancient school design. 

Anyway, here is my progress and here I am {finally} linking up!