Our Rooms: Science Lab and Mind Masters!

It has been a while since I posted anything because, quite frankly, nothing has been going on. Not so anymore! I wanted to start by posting the evolution of our 2 new rooms, beginning to end. We have enjoyed being in them...no wasps in sight! Woo hoo!

This is our science lab as we first found it.

We flirted with an HISD maintenance worker and got him to help us put up the shelves that were from the old lab!

Boxes everywhere!

We are using the FOSS kits for extra counter space now!

The shower curtain is our "closet," although Terri says it reminds her of being at the doctor's..."Please step behind the curtain and the doctor will see you!" Someone else said they expected to find the Wizard of Oz hiding behind it. :)

Our "closet."

Looks great and the kids love it!



This is Mind Masters when we first saw it.

Progress, with another shower curtain closet. This room has a woodlands theme going.

Looks great! Note our special BFF board behind the desk, complete with our favorite BFF photos!



Begone boxes!

The mountain of boxes was about as tall as us!

Dare to hope!

I haven't posted much lately because there was nothing new to report, BUT we have finally received some promising news...we might be able to move as soon as the weekend of October 9th. I think we can actually start going into the new temps and start arranging all 150 of our boxes into a pleasing arrangement.

In the meantime, we continue to be stuck in the old buildings. As further proof of how gross the science lab building is, I give you this picture: inside the lab, I found this small wasp nest on the side of the dilapidated A/C unit....and the unit is still broken. How apropos!

Playground on the Move!

The big kid's playground had to be moved in order to make way for the new building. Everything but the slide was uprooted and hauled over to the little kid's playground, where the area was expanded. It's now very cozy, to put it nicely.

The big kid's playground back in May. It's in the line of fire for the construction, so wave bye-bye!

The edging around the perimeter was removed and then moved to the little kid's playground so that space could be expanded.

Preparing the rock climbing wall for removal.

The rock climbing wall's new home.
Lifting up the sit-up equipment.....
.....which is then moved to the little kid's playground.
Setting up the new edging around the little kid's playground.
The playhouse is anchored in the ground with cement. Right now it looks like a white trash house on cinder blocks!
The bumper tires on the bouncy equipment got squished.
The new playground space gets filled with mulch.
All gone!!

Welcome back!! Now get your old rooms unpacked...for now.

When we got back to school, we were greeted by the following news: all the new T-buildings had been red-flagged by the city of Houston due to some outdated moving permit that Houston ISD had, blah, blah, blah! Bottom line was, we couldn't move into our new rooms. Not that it would make a difference...the new buildings don't even have their metal skirts around the bottom. They are SO not ready.

What did that mean for us? We had to unpack just what we needed for the first few weeks (could be 3 weeks, could be 9 weeks), get furniture arranged, and then be ready at the drop of a hat to get it all moved to the new rooms when the city deems them ready for occupancy permits!! And to top it off, they had already ripped out all of the internet drops from the old rooms. So here are your tax dollars at work: HISD re-installed all the internet connections, at $30 a foot according to one of the workers (and there's A LOT of feet) for what will only be for a few weeks use. Thousands of dollars wasted!! Argh!!!!

One positive note: even though we can't hold classes in the new T-buildings yet, we were allowed to send some of the boxes we know we won't need for the first few weeks to the rooms for storage purposes. So instead of 120 boxes in the science lab, we only have about 40! Joy!

Before: Welcome back to school...boxes galore greeted us in the old science lab, along with the broken A/C that HISD had decided NOT to fix last May, because they thought we would be in our new rooms.

After: much better!

Although this is what the back corner looks like...boxes, boxes and more boxes!

This is what our new science lab room looks like right now, with all our excess boxes. Ugh.

Our new science lab with one of our only means of storage: a used metal cabinet that doesn't even lock. Thanks, HISD.

Hey, and where's our sink in here??

This is a peek inside our new Mind Masters room. So...very....empty....except for our other used, non-locking metal cabinet.

Re-hooking up the internet.

Waste. Of. Money.

Our T-Building City!

All the 4th, 5th and specialist teachers will get to move into these delightful new temporary buildings until the new school is built...and then we will get to pack up and move again, but this time it will be into a shiny new school!

May 2009...One last look (or so we thought)

In May, it was time to move! All 16 teachers in the temporary buildings had to pack up everything, down to the last pencil. In the science lab, that amounted to over 120 boxes! The plan was to have them all moved to the new temporary buildings by the end of the summer. When I took these pictures, we still had 4 days left of school. Both the Mind Masters room and the science lab were almost packed up. One of the A/C units in the science lab was totally broken, but HISD decided not to come fix it since we were going to be moving into our new temporaries in August. Their stance was, "what's the point?" which made sense to me and Terri, who happens to be my BFF/teaching partner. I took these pictures with the idea in mind that all these temp buildings would be gone when we got back to school in August, and I wanted to remember what it looked like. Sadly, at this point, everything still pretty much looks the same.









The front of our school.




























Some of the 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms face the street.



















The corner of the street, Jason and Mullins.











View of the east field and the school...original buildings on the right, nasty T-buildings on the left.
















East field, soon to be filled with construction.














The side of the P.E. room































Gross T-building row , also soon to be filled with construction.

















The breezeway by the Mind Masters room.
















Our Mind Masters door with the lovely signs above!