Wanting to Procrastinate, But Not

I waffle between procrastinator and overachiever. Depending on the task, I'll either get right on it or I'll let it slide a ways down the line. Sometimes I'll do a combination of both- start uber early before ultimately letting the task wither on the vine a bit. School prep is one of those combination items. I do a little bit before school gets out, since the information is so fresh and I often have ideas for how to revise my practice heading into the following year. But I want to take a break, and typically take a few weeks- depends on myriad of factors, but 3-5 weeks where I do little school work.

All of that said, once August hits I start to get restless. As much as I say I'd like to never work- running, reading, playing everyday instead- I end up starting to want to work. In the past 5 days I've gone into school for about 5 hours in order to do some room setup. I prefer to do that stuff without the hammer of the start of school hanging over me- many will do all setup during their first week back. I tend to need more space to get it done, freedom from folks interrupting or planning for the year. The planning tends to be my first week back stuff, a chance to really dig in without stressing about classroom environment.

This year I move out to a portable. I'm excited about the move, since previously I was in a shared space. This gives me more more wall space, as well as a lower ceiling and the ability to hang things from it (student work, etc). I think it is roughly the same square footage, if not slightly larger. In the end it will be nice. I'm unconcerned about the fact that it is outside of the building, therefore meaning we will lose a little bit of instructional time. Assuming I plan for it with my teammates, it shouldn't be a huge issue. Some of our swapping of kids could be challenging since that means lugging binders and notebooks around. But I think it will work out just fine after some initial adjustment.

Below are a few pictures of the room. It is what you'd see looking in from the door, panning left to right. This is before getting things put away, but is a rough idea of what the space looks like. Lots of table space! There is a gap by the circle table in the first picture because that is where our netbook cart will be going (cart of 16- the other cart will be in the other portable). I am also relatively sure that my 3 groups of 6 will be trimmed since I likely won't have 30+ kids, and we don't have spare desks. Let me know what you think.