If you give a teacher a day to work in her classroom, she will probably be so startled by the amazingly shiny, waxed floors, she won’t notice the that all the computers have been piled in the sink.
As she gazes across the shiny floor, she’ll become so excited that she’ll probably start unpacking the first box she gets her hands on, pulling out all the fun subitizing math centers with cute erasers from Dollar Tree.
That will remind her of all the bags of stuff she brought with her today from Target Dollar Spot that she’s been amassing all summer long and hiding from her husband under the guest room bed. She will start to go through all the bags, pulling out the alphabet cards, and felt fraction sets, and colorful clothespins, and some ceramic apple thing that she’s not sure what to do with.
Then she’ll realize she can’t put any of those things away yet since every single piece of furniture is piled precariously in the corner, so she’ll start to move tables. And desks. And chairs. And shelves.
When she moves the shelves, she’ll remember all the categorized book labels she printed and laminated for her classroom library and start searching for them in the giant stack of boxes, none of which she actually labeled in the frenzy to get out of this place last June.
As she’s shoving boxes around everywhere, she’ll get distracted by the bright, neatly folded, clean curtains she took home and washed over the summer.
Since she can’t find the curtain rods in any of the 37 boxes she has unpacked into the middle of the floor, she’ll start putting up a bulletin board.
While looking for the *good* stapler on her desk, she’ll decide to try to put her desk in order and organize all her Sharpies, and Mr. Sketch markers, and Flair pens into color coordinated containers. She’ll have to try every single color. Twice.
Her team mate will come in and ask her to go to lunch. An actual meal out at a restaurant with colleagues that will last more than 7 minutes.
After lunch, she’ll open the closet and discover the pocket charts, the birthday box, the easel charts, the curtain rods, and the word wall banner. She’ll realize she needs a step ladder because the last time she stood on a chair there was an accident report involved, so she will head out to find the keeper of the tall step ladder, the head custodian.
As she’s searching all four million square feet of the building, always two steps behind the elusive custodian and the tall step ladder, she’ll spot her teacher BFF’s adorable classroom already set up and beautifully organized. She’ll become instantly convinced that her classroom will not be even remotely ready by the end of the week and she’ll start to run at a full sprint, in a panic, back to her hot mess of a classroom.
It is now time to go home, every box is half unpacked, the room is destroyed, nothing is actually finished, and she’ll need at least two more classroom work days to undo the damage.
Welcome Back to School!
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