A Little Light Housekeeping

Yesterday I started a project that I'm sure will raise a few eyebrows when the kidlets return to school on Tuesday: I took down each and every old picture from the choir room walls, as well as some old posters that were faded.

The previous teacher hung the past years' choir pictures with very little order or pizazz. Some had frames, some did not. Frames didn't match, or were too big for the pictures. I've never liked how it looked and always thought, "one of these days, I'll change it up a bit."

And so I did. Every picture has been taken down. Pictures have been removed from frames. Frames have been discarded and the pictures filed away (read: set on top of a pic stack of stuff) in my end of the music library. Tackling that mess is the next project, but it's gonna be a while before I get to that.

Anyway, the pictures weren't working for me. The faded old posters weren't working for me. So down it all came, and up went my stuff.

I started with four small bulletin boards, one for each choir. I decorated them with scrapbook stuff in the school colors. I'll add more as I go, but for now, it's a good start.

I also changed the order of things in my room. The piano was always next to my desk, leaving it across the room from the white board. Any time I wanted to use the white board in a lesson, I had to climb over rows and rows of choir kids, and there was no guarantee that they'd turn around to see what I was writing up there. So I enlisted the help of my ever-willing-to-assist colleague, Larry, and we heaved and grunted both the baby grand and my stereo stystem from one side of the room to the other. The result is a nice--and even better, usable--little teaching space on one side of the room. My desk is still on the other side of the room, as it is the only place with an internet hookup for my computer. Plus, moving a baby grand and a stereo system was enough for one school year.

It looks great, if I do say so myself. I have made a couple of slideshows; one is before, one is after. The room isn't actually that dark...even with a flash, my camera can't pick up the light in there as well.

Before:



And...drumroll, please...after:



It's a work in progress. I have some more stuff to hang up as time goes on. Still, it's a huge improvement, and I like it.

Maybe because it's truly my classroom now.