My Teacher Bag

I have been severely slacking on the Clutter-Free Classroom Project..... but here I am today to talk about my teacher bag!

Sorry about the sun there... it was just pouring in!!

I have a 31 bag! It's the organizing utility tote. I got it for Christmas from one of my students and I love it a lot. It has held up so far and I think it is suuuuuuuper cute.

This is one area that I don't need help with as far as decluttering!! That is because I never take ANYTHING home. I know for a fact that I will not do it so I have just accepted it and moved on with my life. Here's a little peek inside!

All I have, from top to bottom, is my planning book, two library books to be returned, my little laptop and the cord. I never have anything else in here so it stays super clean and decluttered!

I don't use the pockets at all... I sort of wish I did but then I'd be carting around lots more stuff, so it's probably better this way. :)

And here is one area of my room that is always decluttered!

These are the little baskets where I keep all of our reading stuff. My manuals are on the top there. I keep all of my other manuals in a plastic crate inside the coatroom, but since these aren't bound, they don't sit nicely like the other ones. Plus I can never find find them if I don't keep them in the baskets!

So you can see the manuals on the top, and then underneath there are workbooks and readers for each kid. I also keep the CDs in there because I would lose those too. :) I am happy that I thought to keep the books like this... at the beginning of the year they were across the room and it would take the kids two hundred years to get their books and come to the carpet. Now it's right next to us so they just come over and grab their stuff!

And the kids LOVE to reorganize this area after reading is over because no one ever puts their books in like this when they're done.

Okay, that's all for today! Now I am off to a fondue party!! I have never had fondue so I am hoping for the best!!

Odds and Ends ... and a Dilemma

Just some random stuff to share tonight! I'll make a list.

1. I took a few new pictures of some winter-y things in our room!

I already wrote about our snowman comparing activity, but since then, a few people at school were boggled by the display, so I added a title and took a nicer picture for you! I just printed out letters in a bubbly font and then cut them out. It was a little tedious but I am happy with the outcome!

 Here is our door right now. Nothing too fancy but it is okay. The kids love their mittens for some reason.

 And I never posted a finished picture of our January math quilt! Please don't mind that aquarium underneath............ ay yi yi.

2. I have been slacking on the Clutter-Free Classroom Project BUT I did want to update that I cleaned an area of my room!!!!!! I am super proud of myself.

Here is the before picture...

 And here is the after!!

That corner by the file cabinet has legit been messy since like week 1 of school. So it reeeeeeally makes me happy to see it clean!! I pretty much just threw everything away. I did relocate the linking cubes to a math area.

I am happy that this week in CFCP is working on our teacher area. Mine needs some help. :( My students tell me that almost every day....

3. I'll end with my dilemma. Today we started our new unit in Social Studies, which is Our Government. Because I teach at a Catholic school, my students come from very conservative families. That, in and of itself, obviously is fine! We did another vocab visit, like I did with matter, and I had printed a picture of President Obama, since he is our president. As soon as I put the sheets out to write on, I had a few students saying how much they hate Barack Obama, how their parents hate Barack Obama, that he doesn't want to have any schools anymore (???) and how he is a bad and terrible person.

This frustrates me on several levels, but mainly because regardless of how you feel about a president or his tenure in office, I think it's very important to instill in children that we respect leaders. So basically that's what I said... you can have your opinion, and that is totally fine, but we are not talking about how we feel about President Obama. He is our leader and he is important to our country.

Have you dealt with something like this? Or how would you have responded? I know I am going to be hearing this every day until I can figure out what to do. :(

Clutter-Free Classroom Project: Week One!

As soon as Jodi posted about the Clutter-Free Classroom Project, I knew I had to participate. I am not super organized. I want to be, but it's just not a part of my personality (which I think makes me a minority in the teacher blogging world). Does the mess in my classroom bother me? Yes, but not overly.

However, it doesn't reflect well on me when colleagues ask for things and I can't find them! Or when they come in and my room is a hot mess. So, I hope that this project will change my cluttery ways. :)

The Week #1 Challenge is to post our before pictures. Just like everyone else, this is pretty embarrassing. But I have been comforted by everyone else's posts!! It's not just me!! 

So here we go!

This is my coatroom. It is amazing that I have a coatroom, but it is an absolute disaster in here. All of the boxes on these shelves are FULL of books that were already in my classroom that I don't want in the classroom library for whatever reason. It also houses any extra stuff that I don't know where to put because during the day I can't see it!

I have this metal shelving unit that I actually cleaned off a bit before this picture. I want it to be a useful space. Right now it is semi-useful. It holds some of my reading stuff and my indoor recess and base 10 block totes. Plus some other stuff underneath...

Here is another corner of the coatroom. There used to be a massive aquarium tank in here but I removed it a few weeks ago because I kept banging my head on the corner and it was super painful!!!!

Look! Something in the coatroom is clean! This is a giant metal cabinet that my cousins cleaned out.

This shelving area is okay. It holds all of the textbooks that we regularly use and one section has reference books. It also holds our caddies and scissors/glue basket. But it holds random stuff also. Not cool. In the top right corner is a giant pile of play scripts because apparently I expressed interest in directing a play for the school????? Ay yi yi.

And this is the terrible other side of the shelving area!!!! I don't even look at this because it stresses me out.

Here is my math stations area. One of my bins became a chair and it promptly broke because I bought them at Dollar Tree. This is also supposed to be my prayer corner. The top shelf of this cabinet has general math stuff in it, like geoboards and hundreds charts. Basically just another spot to shove things where I can't see them!

This is my sad desk. I bought that turquoise file box because I think it will help me stay more organized. This is just a catch-all for stuff. The little filing cabinet in front of the desk would be awesome to have so close except I pretty much just use it as a catch-all table!! What is that Scholastic box even doing there?? And right now our recycling bin is ridiculously overflowing because I recycled TONS of stuff. I hope the 6th grade recycling helpers don't kill me on Monday when they come to pick up my bin......... yikes.

Last bad picture - this is my small group table that I use during math stations. It would be okay except for that corner by the file cabinet. No one walks over there so I just shove things in that corner! But I don't want to!!

Here is my front wall! My whiteboard, clip chart, desk, and lunch choice board are all here.

And here is the back wall. That cabinet with the textbooks and then random stuff is in the middle. You can also see my computer table and the small group table.

Here is one side wall. This is where we sit for whole group lessons. You can also see the calendar board, our student work boards, and then another display of student work that needs to be taken down since it isn't Christmas time anymore!

And the other side wall. Here is our word wall and our art display section. Also you can see the two entrances/exits to get into or out of the coat room!

So that's the scoop!! Thanks for sitting through all those pictures. :) I am looking forward to being organized someday!!