Monday, June 2, 2008

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Okay, maybe it wasn't the sky, but it was ceiling lights, ceiling tiles, walls and boxes!

I promised you all I would show you pictures of the war zone that is, scratch that, was my classroom! I know this is a bit of picture overkill, but I'm still completely shocked when I look at the transformation that my classroom took. I also can't believe that the working conditions we had were OSHA approved, or that it was safe for 450+ students to spend 8 hours a day in classrooms that had few ceiling tiles, cement dust floating around, holes in ceilings and walls to the outside and wires hanging from ceilings. But, I digress ... .. .

BEFORE: Here is my classroom the last few days of school. I still had things on my walls, and the room was still functioning. However, I had started to pack (what I thought was a lot of boxes) and I was making progress!

Bulletin boards and turn-in trays. Boxes of books and binders. The kids' desks, the reading corner and the front of the room. My corner from hell! What a mess this was!

DURING: This is what my classroom looked like literally 45 minutes after the kids left! We went down for our last-day-of-school lunch in the cafeteria, and I came back to very few lights, my desk and things shoved all over the room and the "tear down" process already starting!

My corner after they shoved my things all over and threw them on the floor. The ladder was in the place of my desk chair and file cabinets and I had significantly less lights!The kids were nice enough to help me stack chairs and desks. They were moved shortly after this.My corner, sans doors. The doors were the first thing to go. Brenda lost some things she had on her door window, and I grabbed her curtains as they were walking out the door!

AFTER: Here is what used to be my room and pod (hallway to those of you that don't teach in a BV school)! There are no more walls and many of the boxes have already been removed. If people thought I was freaking out yesterday when I came back to a few lights missing, they would have seen me basically having a panic attack when I came to find more of my things thrown on the floor and no lights and walls!

This is a picture of both my room and Brenda's room. Mitzi is showing them off! Brenda's room starts to the left of that TV that is hanging on the back wall.
There's Brenda waving in the back from her room. You can also see one of the construction workers. I'm pretty sure they were all tired of hearing us bitch and moan, but we were shocked to see movers that came in to move our belongings a whole 30 hours before we were told we had to be done!
My desk and corner, finally empty. It took about 10 helpers to calm me down and help me throw stuff into boxes that I labeled "To Be Filed". I don't know the final box count was, but I was constantly sending coworkers out to find me more boxes.
This is a view of 4 classrooms across the hall from me. All the walls were gone and their boxes were gone the day before!
This is the view from my end of the pod up towards the main part of the building.
My lovely teammates and I. They were so good when I cried several times throughout the week, and they were there to help me even when they weren't done themselves!
My room into Brenda's again. Wouldn't it be fun if I could always see her at her desk from mine? We probably would get even less accomplished if we were and open classroom building design! :)
I don't even know what this is. I think this is more of my room looking into what used to be a hallway. That is Mitzi's door back there on the left!
More of our pod.
This is the gym where they are going to be storing all of our things. I'm shocked the piles weren't taller than this!
More boxes and those are doors and wall sections on the right.
More boxes. Watch out for that tilting stack!
More furniture!

Okay ... that's it. I'm kicked out of there until at least August 10th. It is kind of nice knowing that I can't go up to work, even if I wanted to! I did bring home personal items and a few boxes of things to use for tutoring.

Off to run a few more errands. Hope everyone enjoyed the picture show of the construction chaos!

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6 comments:

Kathryn said...

Wow. That's amazing that you were able to get it all done in such a short period of time.

Anonymous said...

So scary! But yeah for summer!!!! Only one more day after today and I will join you! Hope you are enjoying!!!!!!

J :)

34th Stater said...

Hazardous Duty pay? Have a relaxing summer. It will all be much better in two months!

chitknit said...

Extreme Makeover: Oak Hill Edition

Only you didn't get to hang out with crazy Ty Pennington...

Bets said...

Yeah for summer, is right!

I know this will all pay off in the end, and I'm very excited that the next time I actually get to see the school, everything will be done and beautiful!

Beth said...

Wow...I'm sort of glad I'm not there to experience all of that! Yikes!

I also hope you're getting paid more for doing all this packing...