Gifts for Teachers

Last August, days before school was to start, the most important thing in my entire world was making sure my classroom looked good.  I painstakingly looked to all the little details: I artfully arranged scrapbook paper on my one small bulletin board to put up classroom notices; I placed them around my old wooden desk and then covered them in clear contact paper.  My desk had labeled landing spots for my tape, stapler, and 3-hole punch.  I pinned manilla folders to my wall, labeled with the days of the week, for extra copies of assignments.  My pens matched, my pencils were sharpened, and all neatly corralled in adorable teacher mugs.

About three days into school, none of that mattered.  Teaching became a game of survival; small details didn't matter.  My pens and pencils immediately disappeared into the abyss of negligent students.  I feel guilty getting more from our supply room, so I've been stocking myself from the dollar store.  Every time I have a sub, I return to no writing utensils; students apparently don't feel the need to return them if their thefts are untraceable.  My ticky-tacky failed and my adorable poetry definition posters fell off the wall; this week I caught students fanning themselves with the posters.  If I think to open a drawer or a cabinet on the other side of the room, I will probably find gum, an empty chip bag, or a failed geometry assignment tucked in there next to my extra bulletin board edges.  Since our Key Club stopped recycling office paper, I have piles and boxes of it under my desk and shoved in my file cabinet, waiting for the day I have enough gumption to take it home with me to recycle.  My classroom is a mess - I'm lucky if I have the date correct on the board when I write my agenda each day.

The point of my musings is that school is coming to a close.  My students' final project will be entirely online, so I won't have any more papers to grade.  I can start cleaning out slowly, and start uncovering those lovely stapler and tape labels on my desk that didn't work at all.  I caught an article on Buzzfeed about gifts to give teachers that they actually might want, and it made me start dreaming about making my classroom pretty again, at least until the last week in August when all of this starts again.  I think my favorite gifts were book necklaces from Etsy or the grammar stamps for repetitive essay grading...