High School Room Progress...

I've probably spent about a total of 12 hours organizing this room so far, and I am happy to say progress has been made!  I probably have half of the cabinets organized and consolidated, or at least emptied out to store other stuff.  I wish I would have remembered my camera or phone yesterday when I worked in there because you wouldn't believe the amount of construction paper I unloaded from the tall double cabinet and four short cabinets...it seemed unbelievable to me!  I don't use that amount of construction paper in my elementary room!  Either way, I kept some paper supplies and donated the rest to the school overflow room.  I have cleaned out and gotten rid of all of the extra furniture that I don't want and hopefully by the end of the week, the custodians will have the floor stripped and waxed.  I plan on moving my pottery wheels from the elementary room down to the high school room to create a pottery nook.

As I'm organizing, I'm thinking about maternity leave in November/December/January and all of these supplies that my substitute is going to have to deal with.  I am thinking of locking cabinets during my leave and only leaving ones open that she/he will need access to for supplies...which brings me to a question...do you label your cupboards on the outside?  I'm thinking about putting labels on the cupboards so it will be easier for the sub to navigate, but I don't want to make it easier for other teachers to convince the sub while I'm gone that they need supplies.  The only reason I worry about this is because teachers have been trying to scavenge supplies out of this room since the end of the school year when they found out the other teacher was retiring (as if they had to worry...I feel like I'm giving up and donating plenty of supplies!)  My other option I thought about was drawing a little diagram of the room cabinets and labeling everything in the diagram in my sub binder, but it seems more work intensive.  

This cabinet was full of yarn, yarn and more yarn!  I gave two boxes away, put there boxes down in the overflow room, and kept half a shelf and the boxed yarn that is new.  This is going to be my fiber crafts cabinet (and cellophane...lol).  I'm not too into fiber crafts but the time may come that I would want to do some basking weaving or something with the students, so I'm keeping this small stash of supplies.

This cabinet was FULL of construction paper.  I have turned it into the paper supply cabinet.  The top shelf has a small assortment of multi-colored construction paper and black construction paper (for framing artwork in case I run out of mat board).  The second shelf has white, manila and colored tag board.  The third shelf has tracing paper, manila drawing paper and the half used sketchbooks that will be used to supply white drawing paper when needed.  Fourth shelf contains watercolor paper, block printing paper, graph paper and art paper.  Bottom two shelves have the large drawing paper/tagboard/construction paper, watercolor paper and then some random packages of other art paper.  I have labeled each shelf with a piece of masking tape.

These two shelves also contained construction paper.  Now, the cupboard on the left is the sketchbook overflow cabinet and the cabinet on the right will hold art games and activities.

Again, this shelf had construction paper...now it houses the art VHS tapes and reference/resource books.

You can see the four cabinets that were in the room are cleaned out and gone!

The back nooks have been organized...The top middle one will hold the glaze that I ordered for this year.  Bottom right is for stained glass and the top right will be for all the canvas boards I ordered.  Middle right contains linoblocks.  Middle and top left contain 1/2 gallons of acrylic.  Bottom left contains Masonite board and the middle bottom has lots of clay boards.  The rest of the cabinets in the back of the room haven't been touched yet...

Aside from the cupboards I pointed out, there were four other short cabinets that had shelves full of construction paper...I kid you now, when I stacked everything that I didn't want on the tables, it was probably a 5'x5'x5' stack!

I've got the keys...!

...to my 2nd art room!  Hmmm, does this mean I need to come up with a new name for my blog since I will now be teaching out of art room 104 and 309??? ;)   Here's a glimpse and a little history about what I am now dealing with cleaning up in my new room...

The previous teacher had been in this room for at least 20 years.  Before that, she taught at a different district, but it was combined with another, and that's when she ended up in this classroom.  So, needless to say there is about 35 years of collecting in this room!  The previous teacher also had a COMPLETELY different organizational technique than me...meaning complete opposite...so I have my work ahead of me if I want to keep myself sane this school year!  What works for one person doesn't always work for another...

I received the keys to the room yesterday and my hubby came in for an hour and a half with me yesterday to help me do some heavy moving and lifting.  Today I spent about two and half hours sorting and cleaning as well.  There are A LOT of extra cabinets and furniture in this room that make it feel very cluttered, so my goal is to get things sorted and consolidated so that I can get rid of that extra furniture.

There is also some lower grade paints that I will be donating to our new school supply room (a catch-all for unwanted supplies...teachers can come and give and take as needed), which will hopefully keep teachers from borrowing supplies from the art room!  Unfortunately, there is also a lot of paint that I will be tossing because it is completely separated and will not mix back together.  Same with about half the glazes.  They are either VERY watery or completely dried out.  Luckily, all of my elective requisitions were put through this year and I will get everything I ordered for the high school room, all of which will end up replacing a lot of the old stuff I plan on getting rid of.

Once the cleaners get the room cleaned and the floors waxed, I plan on having them move the three pottery wheels from my elementary room into the high school room so that I can have a ceramic nook, which has me really excited!

This is the door to the classroom.  The divider and brown cabinet has been cleaned out and removed from the room (extra furniture!).

When you enter the classroom, this is what you see on the right side.  All the tables and stools are pushed up against the cabinets because the custodians are currently working to clean the room as well.  The door way in the back is the dark room.

Inside the dark room, left and right respectively.  I plan to keep the enlargers for now, until those supplies are used up.  Ideally, I would love to turn this into a mini computer lab with Macs!

This is the front of the room, when you enter the door to the left.  Computer is under the sheet, storage behind the chalkboards much like my other room.

Corner of the room where the dark room is.  There are two sinks and plenty of counter space.  There is a grey metal cabinet that held lots of glazes and old paint that I cleaned out today for removal.  The other open cabinet has lots of basking weaving and yarn in it.  That will also be cleaned out, materials consolidated and that cabinet removed as well (I just got rid of the boxes upon boxes of yarn I had in my elementary room...there are THREE (yes 3!) cabinets full of yarn.  Some of it will have to go!

View from the corner where the sinks are to the opposite corner of the room.  The dark blue, low bookshelf will be gone, as well as the other two dividers in the corner and two of the three file cabinets that are behind the dividers.  Also, the tall cabinets and three short cabinets behind those dividers are FULL of construction paper!  Those will definitively be consolidated and donated to the supply room...There is more construction paper in this room than I have and use in the elementary room!  Construction paper is also another one of those items that teachers want to borrow from the art room, so I'm hoping if I give a lot of it up that I know I won't use, they'll leave me alone...(I know, wishful thinking right?).

And finally, the back of the room.  This is a small area that is adjacent to where the dark room is.  The kiln is back there, as well as more counter space, another sink (to the right) and more storage.  I have so far removed the curtains and consolidated the materials on those shelves.  All the paint and glazes I am keeping have been moved onto those empty shelves I created when I moved things around.

The extra counter space...kiln is to the right, outside the picture.  Sink and curtained shelves are behind me in this picture.

Stay tuned for more pictures as I share how I'm organizing this room to fit my needs and personality!

Friday: Day 3 of Extended Mural

On Friday we managed to get quite a bit done on our mural!  We touched up some of the background and we were able to paint two coats on each of the figures!  Come Monday, we'll have to put a third coat on the yellow figures and the football, get a ladder to paint the top of the sky, and start outlining everything!

I think that we will paint a little bit more...I decided that I would like to do some mini paintings in the white areas above and below the window in between each mural...I envision a cloud bubble with a single physical activity in it...that way we can do the mountain climber, tennis player, roller-blader and soccer player!

We also had a bit of time to do some glazing on Friday.  I pulled out a set of bisque bowls and let the kids go to town glazing.  We used the detail writers and textured glazes that I mentioned in my last glaze post.  Some got real creative with their drips.  I can't wait to see how they turn out!

I also bought a set of 6 of the Mayco travel mugs for the teachers to glaze!