Heidi's Crafting Mecca

This school year, I am starting a brand new adventure at DREAM Charter School in East Harlem, New York City. If you click here, you can actually read my staff bio on the website. There are some really amazing, talented and creative people working at this school. It is a new situation where I will have 25 students and a full-time co-teacher. I am so lucky to be working with Brooke in our classroom. She is amazing and many of the same interests--one being that she is very artist! FABULOUS! Let me walk you through our journey so far...

When I moved to DREAM from my last school, about 50 boxes of books and teaching materials came with me. They were stored in the basement for the summer and needed to come from the basement to the fifth floor! We have no elevator! Marty took on the task (by himself) of bringing up all of the boxes--it took him 13 hours and many blisters. BUT, everything is now upstairs! This is Marty and Brooke putting together shelves that would eventually turn into our classroom library--the nucleus of our classroom.

This is a picture of just the beginning of the "stuff" as it was coming up. There were moments when none of us were sure it would come together. We stuck together and worked as a team to make it happen.

This is the very early stages of our Math Center. We moved that stuff around so many times to make it feel "just right". Brooke and I have the same philosophy regarding the classroom environment: calmness, structure, organized and full of art and books!

This is one storage closet which no longer has those books in it. It makes me laugh to look at this pictures as so much has changed from these photos to the end results!

This picure makes me shake a little! This was at one of the heights of having things all around us. We kept saying "maybe if we JUST clear off the tables"...if only we knew how many times we would clear off those tables...