A teacher's sacred rites of summer

Every teacher needs to be forced to clean his or her classroom every year, whether it is to move rooms or just as a masochistic rite that marks the beginning of summer. 

For those of us who don’t teach by the book, the cleaning and sorting process takes just a bit longer. 

Like most teachers, we must also recap the markers, gather the chalk and erasers and magnets, and take down and sort the posters- all twenty- something of them. We also stow our cute family photos, displayed with the intention of making us real people to our students.  And we also remove the wall calendar. 

But those are the only similarities.  Now we must debate whether to save the pictures as possible writing prompts for the future, because we know that though there are millions of images available online, sometimes holding a picture in one’s hands is the next best thing to being there. 

Only then the sacred rite of packing up begins.

The first challenge is finding boxes for all the items that may not be left on the desks, tables or shelves so the custodians can wax or shampoo the carpets.  Not all boxes are created equal, so we tend to look for paper boxes first, and hope that no one has been hoarding them for a move to Maine.  If we are lucky or ambitious, we secure banana boxes through a young relative or parent who has a part-time job.  These are the sturdiest of all and can manfully handle books that must be removed from the ten bookshelves that circle our room.  The dozen tiny Amazon boxes tossed in the garage, albeit made of strong corrugated cardboard, are saved as a last  resort.

Then the boxes must be loaded, preferably in a neat and orderly system because, of course, they will all be unloaded in the two weeks before school begins in late July when no one wants to sort random stuff left over from last school year.   In order to save the custodian staff some work, we begin making an effort to consolidate into as few boxes as possible. Games in one, or two… or three.  Playdoh, beanbags, marker boards, extra erasers and markers, flashcards, baggies, all go in one marked educational tools.   Except for the two items that are just a hair too big and keep the lid from fitting.  They go in another “misc” box, so labeled because we can never spell once school has ended. 

Now it’s really decision time. Over the year, the plastic closet has been crammed with new artifacts, pushing last year’s stuff to the back.   What can be pitched, given away, or placed neatly in the boxes already labeled?   Leftover handouts:  When will we teach that unit or class again?  Is there space in the filing cabinets?  Half-used spiral notebooks: Should we tear out all the pages to recycle them? What about saving empty file folders with both sides labeled?  

This process can take hours. 

As the empty boxes evaporate and we are getting discouraged, we decide to face our past head-on.  We contact the custodians for the combination to a teacher double-locker just outside our door. No worries;   we are teachers now, not students, and the combination works and there is no tardy bell ringing in our ears.    Aha!   The small baskets will fit- what can be crammed into them?

Now there are only the giant stuffed tiger, the bent curtain rod with faded blue sheets, and two decorative foils from the Cyrano de Bergerac unit. What the heck?  Leave them out and let the custodians have a little to grumble about.

Finally, everything on the desktop is swiped into the drawers to be sorted in late July and artfully replaced, as we start all over again.