(Day 181: Last Teacher Day and Scholastic Trip #2 Travel Day)

This is my room at the beginning of the school year before the children came in on the first day:

Notice how shiny everything is and how bare bones the room was?  Throughout the year I've added games and projects and papers and all the other things you accumulate over the course of the year.  (Where does it all come from anyway?)
 
This is the room on the last teacher day of the year, looking sort of the same, but not really.

All of my stuff has been cleaned, sorted, thrown out, or filed away for use next year.  Any furniture that does not belong to the school had to be moved into the coat area so the floors are clear for the cleaning crew. (The crew will move all the deks and tables.)  The counters all needed to be cleared, too, so the coat area is filled with my mailboxes, centers organizers, my desk chair, fans, file bins, book bins, etc.  My posters get to stay because they aren't doing anything with the walls this year.  The other picture I took didn't come out clearly, but there is nothing on the counters by the windows.  My desk is (gasp!) totally clear, too.

After cleaning, sorting, filing, and moving, I left about half an hour early so I could dash home and get a shower before hopping on the train to travel to New York for a special (read: not a usual occurrence) set of meetings with Scholastic.  The company asked any advisors who were able to make it to come back and see the updates and changes before the print deadlines for the fall.  (These would be the updates and changes we talked about during our February meetings.  Read Day 111, Part 1 and Part 2, and the Saturday Meetings links.) I made it to the station with about half an hour to spare before departure.

I made it to Penn Station (which is in the same building as Madison Square Garden) around 9 p.m., took a nerve-wracking taxi ride to the Tribeca Grand Hotel, checked in, took another shower (even riding in the train felt gross), and prepared for a day of meetings. FYI: I slept much better this time; no construction going on outside my window!

More to come on the meetings; you are going to be so happy this fall!