I just wanted one little thing...

...from my classroom and I ended up staying an hour.  Since June 18th, the air-conditioning in our school has been off.  Let me remind you that I'm in Texas, and you DON'T want to go up and work in that crayon-meltin' heat with no a.c.  If I go up to school for something in the summertime, it's a run-in and run-out kind of situation.  I had lunch with my teammates today...I love them. I have THE BEST team of friends to work with.  Afterwards, I decided to swing by the school, run inside and grab a hanging file of math stuff to reorganize at home.  When I walked in it was just "ahhhhh."  The good kind of ahhhhh, like when you come in from hot recess and you're hit by that cool air when the door opens.  A team of custodians had been cleaning carpets and walls, etc...so the air was on.  They were finished with my room, so I stayed of course!  My furniture was shoved into a big pile in the corner, so I moved it more to the middle, still in a pile, put my teacher desk back where it goes, and started to organize some things.  I thought I'd share a picture of a couple of things.  Well, two pictures and one thing.  The first one is my room after I moved the student desks kinda to the middle of the room.  Can you see my clips hanging from the ceiling?  I keep something hanging from the ceiling all of the time during the school year.  I'm 5'3", so hanging anything from the ceiling used to require me walking on the desks after school, risking life and limb.  I came across these neat little gadgets that work if you have acoustic tiles.  They fit on the metal strips between the tiles. They come with a little tool you use to install them, and you just attach it to a broomstick (just use the one you ride to school on when you have PMS.)  You just "twist" and the plastic thing locks onto the metal strip, then the string is adjustable. (Probably a good thing I'm not a technical writer for a living.)  I have them hanging so I can stand on the floor and clip stuff up without climbing.  I ordered mine through some company in a catalog, but they have them at Mardel, click here to see a picture. Here are a couple of photos of my room today:

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Here's a picture of our hallway decorated in the spring of this year.  We change it about four times a year, seasonally. We reinforce symmetry using the butterflies.  We cut them out, dot some food color on one half, and fold it over to make a print on either side.  The kids then color around the food coloring, but in a symmetrical fashion on each side.  

 I seem to develop super-human strength when I want something moved and there is no one to help.  I hope if I ever really need to fight some bad guy, it'll reappear at that moment.  I moved a half-hexagon table from down the hall into my room. It had to have weighed several hundred pounds...well I don't know how much it weighed, but it was heavy and it's now where I want it.  My husband will come home and the whole living room is completely changed.  Where there's a will, there's a way, right?  

I'm not going to leave you with the impression of my classroom from that photo.  I'll post "after" pictures later!