Did Ya Miss Me?

I know how you must all be feeling -  abandoned, betrayed, confused and disillusioned, and believe it or not, I didn't even TRY to alphabetise that!

No, I know what you must be thinking - he just up and left! No warning. No Terminator-esque "I'll be back". Just one minute he's blogging about his classroom and the next he has vanished.

Where did he go?

Well, I'll be honest, I didn't really go anywhere but life has taken a dramatic turn over the last few months.

First, I got engaged (Yay!). My beautiful fiancé, Alanna has agreed to be my wife and I feel fully, completely blessed to have her by my side. Which brings me to...

Secondly, she has flown home to Canada. To make a long and complicated and frustrating story short, we agreed that, professionally and financially, it made a lot more sense for her to go home and establish herself while I continued to finish the school year here, collecting my salary and maintaining a good rapport with the school, until December. Then I go home to be with her again.

For that to happen, the last while has been a whirlwind of packing, purging, selling, and donating. As she moved, I moved. My living conditions have been reduced from a two bedroom apartment to renting a room, from living with the woman I want to hold forever to living with a guy who...well...you get the point.

According to the calendar, it has been 29 days since she flew home. Leading up to it, I was confident that we would be able to real with it all and it would be over before we knew it. The moments leading up to her having to step through the "Passengers Only" barrier were impossibly emotional. 235 days without my Lanny. I proceeded to dissolve into a hysteric mess. I'm glad none of you saw me. It was pretty embarrassing. It hasn't felt like 29 days - more like 229. Too often, I've thought about packing up early but haven't. It isn't getting any easier, either. But I have to just keep plugging away.

So here I am, plugging away.

So this isn't a "check this out" post or a "this, you gotta try" post. It's a "sorry about the absence" kinda post, a "no hard feelings, right?" kinda post.

So, yeah. No hard feelings?

Liam

Clutter-Free Classroom: Week #3 Post Pics

Well, I did it. Over the last week and a bit, I have been practically living in my classroom but the results are finally ready for your viewing pleasure. The room isn't completely de-cluttered. I have a few things that are a bit difficult to physically dispose of (I'm not being sentimental - they just don't fit in the rubbish!) but the end result is a HEAP OF SPACE. You'll see what I mean as you scroll through the pictures.

Enjoy.

 Welcome to Room 34, home of Te Whakarewatanga! This is how the room looked when the students (and parents) walked in on the first day.

 From the same position, here is the front instructional area and my dumping ground  desk. Each whiteboard slides across to reveal more shelving. More on that in a minute.

 Disclaimer: this is my desk BEFORE THE SCHOOL YEAR BEGAN. You can tell because the wood surface of the desk is visible. Currently, it is a tad embarassing since Hurricane Week-One has ripped through and this area looks sadly chaotic. I'll get to that next week...maybe.

 We've moved from the back now, standing by the Smart Board and looking back to the main entrance. Aren't those desks nicely lined up? I bet they look like that at the end of each day, right?

Not!

 And now back to the front. These are the shelves that are revealed behind the board closest to my desk. Let me give you a tour:
First floor: Newsprint and Black Construction Paper
Second Floor: Paint, Glue / Coloured Cardstock, Laminating Sleeves
Third Floor: Student Stationary Sets, Wool (???) / Orange, Yellow, Blue Paper
Fourth Floor: MY Stationary, Stapler, Whiteboard Markers / Red, Orange, Green Paper.

 I mentioned Student Stationary Sets. Here's a close-up of the "Can o' Cut n' Paste". Inside, are 3 scissors and three gluesticks.

 And these are the "Can o' Drawing's". As the picture explains, each contains 12 colouring pencils, 6 drawing pencils, 3 rulers, 1 sharpener, and 1 rubber. I have four of each of these can sets to spread them around the class.

 The coloured paper is sorted in these collapsable shelves. They lay like this to let the whiteboard slide shut...

...And pull open like this when I need access. It was a lucky coincidence that the collapsable shelves fit behind the board.

Finally, this is what I was hinting at above when I said there was a heap of space. When all is said and done, I ended up with all of this space available for later use.

Well, that's all for today's tour. I hope you liked what you saw and for those of you who commented on how beautiful the dark walls and white trim was, I hope I didn't let you down. This has been our introductory week and next week the students start timetabled study full tilt. That means they will be leaving me for most of the week and I will have two other classes coming around as well. When this week is over, I might be singing a different song but for now, I feel really organised and prepared to help my students learn.

For now though, I need to check in and find out what I've missed at Jodi's Clutter-Free Classroom!

See you there!

Wait for it...wait for it...

Oh, man, what a week! between de-cluttering, settling into a new classroom, and planning for the first weeks of class, it has been pretty FULL ON. I know that some of my readers (I hasten to call you 'followers' - it sounds strangely cult-like) are anxiously awaiting pictures of the de-cluttered class because one of them is a few doors away and has been hassling me to post some. I promise they are are on their way but you are going to have to wait just a few days longer. I have to go away for a staff PD session and the weekend is pretty booked, too.

Monday is the last day before students start in so the room will HAVE to be ready by then. What you can take from that is that I will HAVE to have some pictures ready for Monday night (NZ time). I hope you can wait that long and I hope it's worth the wait.

Thinking of "worth" it, thanks to everyone who is leaving the warm and fuzzy comments. They make me feel all...ummm...well, warm and fuzzy inside. :)

Hmm. That's all I have to say? Well enjoy the brevity. The next one will probably be HEAPS longer.

Thanks!

Those of you faithful (and patient) followers who have been reading along since Twist of Liam was in it's infancy can attest to the fact that this blog has grown, changed, and evolved over the last 8 months. Design changes, html, flavicons, twitter, and comment replying are just a few of the changes that you may have witnessed as I incorporated this technological talent into my own repertoire.

Feedback has been lovely with kind remarks abound. I love reading that I made someone giggle, chuckle, laugh out loud, or so hard that they snorted their coffee out their nose (sorry if it made a mess on the keyboard). I feel that the time I spend writing Twist of Liam is quickly justified when someone comments that they appreciate, or better yet will be using, or even BETTER yet HAVE used, an idea that I've shared. Yes, feedback is fabulous.

Sometimes you get feedback that isn't so fun to read.

An old post I wrote, called Punctuation Ninjas, recieved a recent visitor and, subsequently, a little comment.
Tony said
"I googled 'punctuation ninja' (as you do) and thought I would have quite liked to read this, until Firefox finished rendering and I saw the font. I can tell from the recent posts lists that there's a lot of content here, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that I'm not the only one who just bypasses it entirely because of the presentation. Just thought you might like to know."

When I first read it, I thought to myself, Wow...what a goof! He let a stupid little thing like the font prevent him from reading and possibly even gaining a new idea. What a dumb-dumb. I even started to type up a little reply that said basically that same thing. Time was limited so I left it to return to later.

Lucky Liam.

Leaving it for later meant I had time to stew over it, get angry, moan and mutter to myself, and then come back to it. And isn't it funny? When I clicked on repy the second time around, my attitude had completely changed! I wasn't angry and offended anymore, I was thankful that someone took the time to help me be better! He saw something that could be holding me back and offered his two cents worth.

And it's funny how things work out.

Not long later, I got a wonderful comment on a more current blog. I was beside myself in shock as I read that I was Jodi's next pick as Feature Teacher. I told Ms M, authour at Ms. M's Blog and A Teacher's Plan and one of the longest standing ToL readers (Yes, I've adopted my own acronym), "I guess this is how it must feel if you were to save a kitten from a burning tree in the middle of nowhere while sleepwalking only to wake up and not have a clue what you did that everyone is applauding you for!" I didn't think I was doing anything special. Jodi disagrees, apparently.

Expect company, she said.

Ya think?!? ToL is still only young so, yeah, I still check out my stats practically daily. And to be honest, I will probably continue to watch my stats well into it's awkward adolescence. But thanks to that Jodi's feature, that was the busiest traffic day I've had. Ever. Thanks to the traffic, My followers have doubled. DOUBLED.

And thanks to Tony, I had changed the font and my recent visitors have been able to enjoy the content easier. Put the two together and it's funny how things work out.

So, thank you Tony for the feedback. I hope you come back soon and see the changes.

Thank you Jodi for the wonderful praise and attention that your feature has afforded me. I hope I can live up to the expectations of your readers who have hopped aboard.

Thank you readers who have been around and helped Twist of Liam grow. There are too many to mention here but you know and I know who you are. I hope you all continue to enjoy reading my blog.

And thank you to the new readers that have joined in and given my blog a chance. I hope you find it worth following and, if you do, share the ideas you find here.

Clutter-Free Week #4: Daily Decontamination

Now that I'm ALMOST caught up with the Clutter-Free Project, I had a chance to read the current post on Jodi's Clutter-Free Classrooms. Reading through, I think I can manage this week's focus as it was something I had been trying to improve last year.

Papers are the bane of my desk's existence. They are prolific at my school with notices, weekly outlines, memos, notes, thises, thats, these, those, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. My principal has a philosophy about dealing with paper clutter:

"Touch every piece of paper once."

He says "if you pick a sheet of paper up, put it down where it is meant to be, be it a file, a notice board, or the recycling". I say "cool". 

Now while I can't quite get to that standard YET, I would like to share a little resource that I posted back in September to help you keep organised. This is what I make a habit of doing at the end of everyday.

Click the link to visit the original post:

{Daily Decontamination}

I hope it helps.

Happy Sterilising!

Clutter-Free Week #3: What have I gotten in to???

I went in to my classroom on Tuesday. I was so stoked. I had my camera, I had my rules for dealing with the clutter, and I had my plan of attack.

You wouldn't believe how quickly I got to step 3.

...The trouble was I skipped Steps 1 and 2. It took nearly an hour before I even made it to my classroom. There was such a buzz of excitement amongst staff who were so happy to see each other after the summer holidays, that it was virtually impossible to not give in and start handing out hugs.

Regardless, I eventually made it into the room and did my best to stare down the shelves. A wall-to-wall shelving unit filled haphazardly by a team of unfocussed and unmotivated eleven year olds can hold an AWFUL lot of stuff. I thought if I just gave it The Look (you teachers know the one I'm talking about), the clutter might sort itself out. No such luck. I guess, as a third year teacher, that's one more thing I will have to work on.

Alright then. We'll do this the HARD way. That's code for manually and autonimously. That's code for I pulled absolutely everything out by hand. 1pm rolled around and here I was.

No, that's not me smiling. That's a teacher buddy that is about to start his first year. I was multitasking (that's sure to earn me SOME points, right?) and helping him get himself sorted as I tried to do the same for myself.

But this is what came off shelves and what I faced this morning when I returned. The magic elves did NOT show up, despite leaving out cookies and shotglasses of Starbucks, so I had to deal with it myself.

Not fun and not done (and the clock isn't working either).

But the shelves have been cleaned and I got started on refilling them.

Tomorrow's mission is to get the rest of the mess off the desks, start thinking about displays and try to catch up with Jodi's mounting pile of tips and tasks.

All in all, I'm feeling good about this mission. I don't suspect I will ever make it to the "hall of tidy-fame" (where all the awards are level, aligned, alphabetised, and colour-coded) but it's better already. And that's why I joined in in the first place.

Clutter-Free Classroom Week #3: Cover me... I'm going in!

This is it. Tomorrow morning I'm heading in to my classroom after a month and a half hiatus! To say I'm excited to clean up my act is a bit of an understatement. Anyone who has been patiently following my blog (waiting for SOMETHING ANYTHING to happen) will attest to my eagerness to get this party started.

Alas, the time hath come!
Doing my best to keep up with the Clutter-Free Classroom Project, I've spent the evening watching Piha Rescue, Criminal Minds, and Minority Report, all while typing, printing, laminating, and cutting away, making up "stuff" in anticipation for D(e-clutter)-Day. I've got agenda cards made up, I've got out of class passes ready, book box labels prepped, and heaps of stuff just waiting for me to get in to the school so I can use, abuse, and extort my colour printing priveledges!

The plan is pretty simple:
1. take better pictures so I can gloat about how messy my classroom is.
2. Turn on iTunes to get the groove going.
3. Procrastinate.
4. Lay out boxes for "free-to-a-good-home" stuff and bags for "no-one-in-their-right-mind-would-want-this" things.
5. Procrastinate some more.
6. Tackle shelves, one by one, wiping, purging, and kissing goodbye.
7. Itemise everything that (miraculously) makes the cut and survives my 10 rules.
8. Wonder how the heck I am going to put everything away before I have to leave.
9. Haul my "winnings" outta sight.
10. Pat myself on the back for a job well done.
11. Take pictures to make myself feel good.
12. Share and hope I can keep up with this project! Wow. Week 3 and I'm already falling behind. ~sigh.~

Well, that's the plan anyways. We'll see how it goes.

Chat soon.