The New Classroom, Part 1

 Southwest corner with West wall, mostly covered windows with some of the work tables

 East wall that divides main shop from 3 storage rooms & office door under the left tv

 Storage unit in Kiln room

Northwest corner and North wall with wonderful friend that helped clear some of the big items

In May I wrote about the change in my teaching schedule and the new class I will be supervising, Crafts.  After school ended I have been working on the Crafts shop and cleaning and rearranging the space.  Above are four pictures of parts of the shop as I inherited it.  The first four weeks of summer were spent mostly teaching summer school, and occasionally I could slip away and spend some time digging through the room and planning a bit.  The last four have been spent in this room and other rooms Crafts has used for storage.

This building I was told was originally the cafeteria, but I have only known it as the Crafts shop.  The building is split lengthwise by a supporting wall giving a main room which is about 2/3's of the entire space.  The rest of is divided into three smaller rooms.  The North room and the smallest is where the three kilns are located. Only two of the kilns have been connected to electricity.  The two big kilns take up about a third of the room with the remaining walls covered by metal shelving used for storing  kiln materials.  The storage unit in the picture above was rescued from a chemistry lab remodel and I have removed it from the room to create more storage.

One of my reoccurring themes in the changes in this shop is clearing of clutter and unused storage.  Besides the four rooms of this building, there is Crafts tools and material in four other rooms across campus.  Two rooms were in the music building and two more in the weight room.  I eventually hope to get that down to one other room.

The next room in the Crafts building is the office.  At one time we had a great animation lab and this room was home to multiple computers used in the animation process.  What that meant was a room full of cabinets and shelves that made the space feel small.  I cleaned out some of the shelves and reused them for tool storage in the main room.

The South and last room is just for storage.  It is the largest of the storage rooms. I have a planer and large air compressor in the room.  I moved most of the wood storage to a rack in this room.  The biggest job in this room is to organize the tools. Some, like the planer and chop saw, aren't used often and never by the students, at least at this time.  I'm still trying to ease my fear of students with sharp objects in their hands.  I have no pictures of this room before the cleanup, but the janitors have told me stories of having to slide/shinny sideways to get through the room with no attempt to clean because it was futile.  Some of the objects round have surprised me.  Three rolls of unused mil-spec surplus webbing in one drawer, with the military tag still on the roll was one find.  I have paused work in this room and figure it will be a task to tackle over the first semester.

Probably the biggest overall task is the storage of unused and "out of season" tools.  Tools such as the throwing wheels and clay recycler that are only used in the second half of the year.  These are big items that take up lots of space.I have an idea of building tables to fit over the throwing wheels.  When we are not working with clay the tables will be used for other projects.  When clay starts the tables will be removed and the wheels will then be usable.  Nice idea, but still not done.  Maybe next summer.  What really happened is I stored some of the wheels off campus or in areas I cleared out in the shop storage rooms.  I dedicated one of the music rooms to clay storage space.

The tasks before me immediately if the arranging of tools on the tool wall and the decisions on what projects to do this year.  After filling more than two dumpsters, one can get a different feel when walking in the room. After pictures will be coming as I complete more of the renovation. So far there is a sense of accomplishment at the cleaning, but a greater feeling of being overwhelmed at teaching a new subject.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention, school started two days ago.