The end of school was yesterday in Madrid. Each year this generates procrastination and despair over grading creative inspiration and time to consider blog fodder. (For notes from a previous year, click here) This year, as I cleaned out my desk, I found myself avoiding grading my finals asking some important self-knowledge questions:
Important End Of School Questions
1. Do people in other professions love office supplies the way teachers do? My favorite are binder clips!! I have them in all my drawers at school, small recycled glass jars full of a multi-sized rainbow of binder clips. They also accumulate in my purses and my kitchen (for when I grade at home and need to binder clip 250 pages of exams together to get them back to school). When I clean out my desk, I love to stop and treasure my little binder clip piles before I stack them away in a hidden cupboard for the fall. (Trust me, teachers are ruthless about stealing “borrowing” office supplies during summer school. Who can blame them? You need to make your joy when you are teaching summer school.)
2. Is it weird to keep “gently-used” spoons in your desk drawer?
3. How long should people be holding on to never-used hard-copy educational DVD’s in this day and age? For example, my current running time with “Fishing for Change: A Video-Based Approach to Teaching Evolution Using the Oceans” is 5 years. Our computers don’t even have a DVD drive anymore….
4. Why don’t Spanish pencils have erasers? Is this a thing in other countries as well?
5. How long should I keep my workout clothes at school? (The last time anyone used my gym sneakers, it was a student that needed to run on the treadmill for a science experiment.)
In conclusion, for now my gym sneakers are safely stored away with my binder clips and I’m getting out my hiking boots for my first trip of summer–a week of mountains and beaches in the South of France. I can’t wait!! (For a reminder post about how obnoxiously much I love France click here).
Happy end of school to all the teachers out there!
Banner Photo Credit: Camylla Battani