Back to school

Today is the first day I've set foot in my school since June 1st.  It wasn't the first day back with the kids -- that doesn't come til the 27th.  But I knew that the school would be open today, coupled with the fact that I will be in a new room this year, and I knew I couldn't put off the procrastination any more.

So I got quite the workout today.  I didn't get to actually work IN my room at all.  Well, I did take the time to sharpen a bunch of pencils in preparation for the first week, but I didn't get to arrange desks, put up bulletin boards, decorate my door, post inspirational hanging-kitten-meets-Yoda posters...

Instead, I spent the entire day moving things from one room to another.

The room that I am moving into still had most of the belongings and materials of the person who occupied the room last year.  This is not a slight against her, because, after all, all of MY stuff was still in my old room as well.  But it is what it is, and it needed to be moved before I could start moving my stuff in.  So I spent a good portion of the morning moving her stuff 2 doors down to her new room.

Yes, you read that right.  She's still teaching 4th grade, and she was moved TWO. DOORS. DOWN. 
Redonkulous.

She had about 10 large plastic portable shelf units that had a lot of guided reading books on them.  Those are what REALLY gave me a workout, especially my back and quads, and I was sweating like a pig as I finished moving the last one.  That's just about the time that the head custodian came upstairs and asked why I had moved those shelves into the new room.  When I told him, he informed me that those shelves did NOT belong to the other teacher; they were supposed to go out in the hallway, and the custodians had just moved them into my new room while the cleaned and waxed the floors.  They just hadn't moved them back into the hallway.

That would have been nice to know in advance.  (and I may possibly have negated that new wax/clean job through my moving efforts)

Once I got all of her stuff out of my new room, it was time to start moving things from my old room (downstairs) to my new room (upstairs).  Instead of carrying one or two boxes by hand and going up and down the stairs about 200 times, I borrowed one of the school hand carts.  This made it MUCH easier to load up a bunch of stuff and reduced the number of trips I had to take.

It also showed me exactly how poorly thought out the hand cart/elevator relationship had been.  See, the handcart is about 5 feet long, and the elevator is about 4 feet deep.  It's about 8 feet wide, so it fits inside, but actually getting it inside and free of the door was a feat in itself every single time.  I had to push it in at an angle, squeeze into the elevator, reach down and pull the front wheel sideways then push the back end the other way... And if I ever took longer than 30 seconds, the elevator helpfully screeched at me.

Once I had all of my stuff up in the new room, it occurred to me that A) I was leaving all of my 3rd grade math materials downstairs and B) the former occupant of my new room was not a math teacher.  I needed 4th grade math materials from a 3rd source!  I was able to find textbooks in the upstairs classroom of the former 4th grade math teacher, but no other materials at all. Apparently, they were all moved (by her or by the custodians, I have no idea) down to her new 5th grade classroom.

UGH.

So there is still some moving to be done before I can even start to prepare my room for the kids.  Good thing we don't start til the 27th!