The school year is over for us…but NOT for me. I started the year with high hopes, and conclude the year with a record of successes and failures. Typical year!!
Boys are gone and most school staff are gone except for the dedicated core who can’t stop planning, preparing, and working – always looking for better ways to serve their education community.
I am proud to say I am queen of all I survey – rubble, rubbish, sledge hammers, broken glass, and sweaty workmen ripping apart the school library. My staff are gone, but my cool architect, Cecilia Kugler from CK Design, and I are meeting, ringing, planning, and playing with colours, designs, and more. Cecilia and her team have been an amazing inspiration, and we are looking forward to the fruition of the plans that have been developed. Thank you CK Design!
These holidays we are dealing with Stage 1A! of four stages. We will keep rolling out the stages during the year, and into the next. But the worst part of the overhaul will happen over these holidays, with paint, carpet, and major
layout changes being accomplished. During Term 1 we will get our new shelves and our new furniture. Next will be our brand spanking new service desk – a beautiful marble and glass look! After that new offices, new learning spaces and more. But first the basic changes that underpin the re-design of our mulitmodal learning environment for our students.
But as I write this it’s just plain devastation and I’m regularly being evicted to work on my computer up in the staff dining room. Bonus is the ready access to coffee!!
judyoconnell.com 
I can see the new carpet, Judy…
A
Katy M and I share the frustrations and exhilaration that you will and are experiencing.
Kathy’s library was in a container for a term while architects and builders upended and revamped our Springfield Junior Media Centre in order to incorporate “my” ICT area, a work area for computers down a passage, a teaching room etc. I will send you pics next term. It has been marvelous and integrated teaching really happens now. Girls, staff and my T/L, Kathy and I are constantly sharing lessons, resources, space and time.
Carolynn B
Wonderful!! Love to see the work and how it all turned out. It will take us a while – 09 perhaps – to reach the end of our changes, but either way it’s needed and exciting.
Now, when the noise gets too much, come out and visit. Its sad to see the end of the 1970s style palace, but new new year and new environment is not as significant as the new things you will do for the students and staff. Well done, but do take a break.
I do have a plan!! I have extensive design, layout, electrical cabling and more in drawings. I will share my floorplan and vision when I can surface from this chaos, and have some preliminary images to share with everyone to explain the changes. We still have a wide range of things we have to accommodate, being a boarding school, so we are blending traditional with flexible 21st century learning – though nothing wayout! But we are working to a sensible budget too, so what you will see could be replicated by anyone!
Looks good, Judy! Do you have a floorplan? Have you made any radical changes? I work in a Melbourne Catholic boys’ school library, and am often dreaming of changes, but we have a small floor space apart from anything else.