Teacher Tales: This Old Classroom

The daytime portion of The Jason Show has transferred from the newest school in the district to the oldest school in the district.   I am thrilled about my new school, new principal, and my new classroom.  Nonetheless, moving into this classroom has been much like an episode of This Old House.

When I arrived with my first load of things, the room was spic and span, much to the credit of a fantastic custodial staff.  However, their responsibility stops at the cabinet doors.  As soon as I opened them, I was greeted with twenty plus years of materials and manipulatives unclaimed by past occupants of the room, along with twenty plus years of grime and dust.

No matter.  I was actually happy to get down to business and clean them out!  So I opened every cabinet (of which there are many, which is a good thing) and pulled every single thing out of the cabinets onto the floor:

 Yes.  This is actually 15 bags of quilt batting.  Yes it is.

Notice the entire wall of windows?  I love them so.

I sorted everything into piles, kept some of it, and asked for the rest of it to be removed.  Which happened the very next day by the aforementioned amazing custodial staff!

So, with that out of the way, the real fun began.  As I had a week or so to wait for my boxes to be delivered from my other school, I decided to give the room some serious rehab.  This included cleaning every single surface in the room (which involved a ridiculous amount of rags, paper towels, windex, and Swiffers) and also removing perhaps 50 years of miscellaneous hardware attached to the walls that really no longer served any purpose.  I  bought contact paper from the 99 Cent Store and covered some very worn countertops, perhaps the original ones from 1940.

Before:

 After covering one side with contact paper:

And now for the rest of the before and after shots!  Granted, my boards are covered but still empty, and once the students arrive, the room environment changes drastically.  But I've worked really hard on this old classroom and I'm quite pleased with the results.  You may notice that I am something of a minimalist:

Before:

                                                                    

Before:

After:

                                                                               

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

And that's how I spent the first week of my summer vacation, folks!

***

With that, our cast and crew officially hit the road and take to the skies for the upcoming filming of 

The Jason Show Does Italy.

Arrivederci!

Big Girl Camera Practice

A friend of ours gave us her Canon EOS Rebel XTi camera, hardly used at all.  I'm not sure why.  But the truth is it is much more camera than I have ever tried to manage.  We will be going to Italy in a couple weeks and I'm thinking about taking it along.  I have been learning more about it a little bit at a time, mostly through trial and error and also the internet.  Fancy photography terms like ISO and aperture are becoming a part of my camera skills knowledge base.  Are you impressed? 

My pal, Pumpkin Delight, is a talented photographer.  Often her best shots come from her iphone, but once in a while she pulls out her serious camera, and calls it her "big girl camera."  I quite like that term, so that is why I, too, shall refer to the Canon as the big girl camera.

We recently visited The Hungtington Library and Botanical Gardens.  I have said it before and I'll say it again:  I think it is the most beautiful spot in Southern California, hands down.  Even better than Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood on a Saturday night.  Anyway, I thought I'd bring the big girl camera along for some practice.  Now, I know some of you are avid, professional photographers, like Suzanne from Twenty Four at Heart and Becky from Life With Kaishon.  They are also incredibly nice people, so I know they won't judge.  

We took Diego and his cousin, Evan, along for the excursion.    Be warned:  this is the longest post ever, with the most photographs ever.  I'm trying to beat this guy's record.

 Evan studies the map while Diego hydrates.

 Evan got his good looks from both his mom and his dad.

 Diego only takes a serious picture if he is threatened.  True story.

 Unless, of course, you catch him off guard.

 "Oh, look, the nice men are playing leap frog.  Naked."   (Quick, what movie is that from?)

 Speaking of nice men...

 I call this one Garden Vase Next to a Nice Man. . .

 And now for some indoor photography.  No flash, please.  I always wondered how people are supposed to take photos indoors without using a flash.  Well, it turns out with big girl cameras, the lens can allow more light inside, so photos without flash indoors are entirely possible.  And pretty good, too!

 I call this one Pretty Vase with Horses Sticking out of the Sides.

 This thingy looked good so I took a picture of it.

 I heard a tour guide say that this chandelier had something really remarkable about it.  But now I forget what it was.  So just enjoy how pretty it is.

 Vase on Pedestal in Front of Palm Trees

 The Huntington Home.  Cozy, isn't it?

 I liked this one a lot.  So purty.

 Cousin Friends Standing in Cool Light Made from Glass Dome

 Good photographers know how to use light and shadow.  See?

 This is the dome of the tropical building.   It holds all the moisture in, making it the stickiest place in Southern California.

 The Huntington provides many learning opportunities for kids.  Since Diego is a science guy, all of this stuff is right up his alley.  I fear it would have bored me to tears when I was a kid.

 Hands on--make that nose on learning experience.

 Sniff!

 The big girl camera takes excellent close-ups.

 Pretty plant with pink and green leaves, right?

 Reflection of the dome in the pond below.  Although, it is so humid in this place that it is quite possible that the fish were swimming out of the water, in the air just underneath the dome.

 Big Plant.

 Hidden flowers

 Science....

 ...up close.

 I ate some of these berries.  Was that wrong?

 They removed these when they pumped my stomach.

 More learning...

 ...and some playing.

 Which little pig built this house?

 Secrets.

 Real photographers don't photograph flowers.  Who said that, anyway?

 Perspective

 Entering the Japanese Garden

 The Japanese Garden leads to the newly built Chinese Garden.

 And that concludes our tour!

Just a couple more shots:

 Shhhhhhhh!  Don't tell Papi that Patches is on the couch.

 Diego, early in the morning.

And now, for the most out of character pose that has ever been seen in a photograph:

Can you tell Diego took this picture, and can you tell that he talked Giancarlo into this pose, and can you tell how happy Giancarlo is to oblige, and can you tell that there may be some same-sex spousal battery when he sees this?  

The only problem now is, that after this day of hauling around the camera, I realize that "big girl camera" doesn't mean a camera for grown-ups, it actually means a enormous, heavy camera for a girl to use or perhaps guys that are girlish.  Or maybe even it means a large camera that is also female?   By the time we finished, I was so tired of lugging that thing around!  Do I really want to pack it all around Italy, constantly hanging around my neck like a---a----big heavy thing that hangs around my neck, or do I just want to use my little point and shoot digital that fits nicely in my pocket but doesn't take the best of pictures?