Personalizing My Room

I had my first back to school dream last night, and as far as back to school dreams go, it was pretty lame. In it, I hadn't planned what I was going to wear on the first day of school, and the only clothes I had clean were the ones I have been wearing in real life to do my classroom cleaning - mostly tank tops and denim shorts. I say it was lame because I had more residual anxiety upon waking from a different dream I had last night, in which a scorpion was crawling out of the bag of dog food and advancing at me with what looked like ink coming out of its antennae, which in the dream was representing its venom that it was going to inject into me. And about ten seconds after waking from the scorpion dream, I was laughing at the inaccuracies of venomous antennae. I guess it all means that while I am fixated on the prep for going back to school, I am not really worried about the year ahead.

I'm sure the dream was mostly related to the fact that I have been scrubbing and cleaning more than I thought I would. I found more places to scrub yesterday, including the cupboard doors, which cleaned up beautifully with the help of a Magic Eraser. I feel like I need to buy stock in Mr. Clean's parent company. I did also leave yesterday feeling like I had more to do than time to do it in, and was making plans to spend ample time at school this weekend so I wouldn't have to stay too late after the inservice meetings next week.

Happily, today that feeling has diminished. I finished with what I'm going to do for just about every bulletin board and wall space. I still have a long board in the back of my classroom that needs a little more on it before school starts, but I plan to leave some it blank for activities that students will complete during the first few days of school.

Mostly I need to concentrate on my own space now. My desk is the last space to come together every year, and the first to explode again once school starts.

My IB Wall

As I sat squishing sticky tack between my fingers to ready it for use to adhere posters to the freshly painted walls without marring them, I marveled at how clean my room feels this year. Clean in the sense that I have scrubbed and scrubbed until my arms, wrists, and shoulders are sore, but also clean in a decluttered sense. I had extra space to add more touches of personalization including my SU banner, picture of Saint Rose of Lima given to me by a student at my previous school, and my butterfly artwork given to me by my husband when I got the job in my current building. I even have ample space left in my closet this year to store the paper towels, tissues, and other communal use items from the school supply list.

The classroom felt much more like my space this time last year than it did my first year in this building, but it's reached a greater level of personalization this year. I even put up my turtles for the first time in this building.

The decluttered countertop and some personalization