Obsessively Organizing and Decorating - Possibly Need Rehab

Yeah, so, I got this new teaching gig, and I am SO SO SO SO excited about it! I'll be teaching French only - not French, and __________ (fill in the blank). Plus, I'll be teaching either French 1 or French 1 & 2. That means I will have either one, or possibly as many as two, preps each week. I. Am. About. To. Die. from the joy of it! ONLY one or two preps!!! Ahhh, it's like a vacation or something! (I used to have 4 preps. Some teachers I know have 5 or 6 preps: I don't know how they do it and have any kind of life outside of school.) 

I am a big believer in Organizing For Success. That may be a catchphrase but it's a darn good one. I live by it. I need an Organized Environment, with systems and procedures in place, in order to feel calm and sane in the face of hordes of teenagers who don't know me and are consequently going to really Give Me Heck this year. Plus, if I'm going to be staring at the same four walls for hours on end every day, I need to be happy about what I'm looking at. 

When I first opened the door to my classroom, I was greeted with a jumble of student desks, one table, and pretty much nothing else. Like, not even a teacher desk!  But here's the great news: I have this absolutely awesome sister who has given me practically everything she ever used when she was a math teacher, so thanks to her, my classroom isn't so empty after all! As an added bonus, my sister came and helped me out today....and I can't wait to show you the bulletin board she helped me put together!  


This is my desk area so far. I bet you're picking up on the pink, black and white theme, aren't you?  

Okay, the bulletin board. Man, do I love this thing! The background is a large piece of hot pink felt I found at a thrift store, and my sister scavenged the zebra-pattern border from a "To Shred" box out in the hallway: yay for cheap/free stuff! Sister brought over a cute little bottle filled with small fake pink flowers, which we used to dress up the border even more. We pinned them using white thumbtacks so the thumbtack looks like a white flower center. To finish it off my new dressed-up bulletin board, we used fake carnations in the upper corners! Just bend the stems and staple well. Fantastic! 

Here is what I think will be a student table (for picking up and organizing papers) across from my desk: 

Not sure exactly what is going to go here yet.  The shelves could be used to organize papers. The basket on the left is full of "classroom blankets" - for when the kids get cold, they can go get a classroom blanket. The tubs below contain things that need to be stored or that the kids don't need to get into all the time; to keep this all "out of sight, out of mind," I have some pink curtains and sheets that will be tacked on to the table as a kind of skirt. 

The purple bean bag cushion will probably find a different place to stay, too. I'm probably going to make sitting on the cushion a privilege. 

Okay, so this is another student area I'm working on....I'm thinking, for now, that the two bins on each side will be "In" and "Out" student trays. The wire rack in the middle will hold file folders for each class with absent work. Pink flowers will be attached to pens to make class flower pens. Pink bin underneath is for recycling.

On the right? That black rolling plastic bin with drawers? I am SUPER happy with what's going on inside there....here, take a look:
 

 

Yep. All the drawers contain things like crayons, markers and colored pencils, organized by color.  No more raggedy boxes of crayons with too many orange and not enough blue! No more jumbled-up markers in a giant box where you can't even find a red one! Nope, now they're organized by color, so students can quickly and easily find the ones they want. And then they can put them back in the right bins.

SOOOOOO happy about this! Thank you Pinterest for the inspiration, here! 

Now, if I can just get some filing cabinets.