I arrived back at He Dog last night around 5:30pm, and went immediately over to my classroom, intending to spend about an hour prepping school work for the next day (today). As always, I entered the school through Kim’s side classroom door, and the first thought that popped into my mind was that the school had been robbed. Her room was completely empty. As I stepped across the threshold, and nearly broke my neck slip-sliding across the floor, it became clear that the slightly scuffed, nonetheless lovely, wood floors of our 75 year old school had been waxed over vacation.
A feeling of foreboding came over me as I crossed to my classroom, and had to unlock its door for the first time all year. I flipped on the lights, and saw that my room was not empty, but it was a complete shambles. Just torn apart, everything moved around, chairs stacked every which way, the un-vaccuumed rug rolled up on top of a table, the guided reading table across the room, the listening center in disarray, my kids’ book bins stacked in such a way that the books were bent and squashed, and a bookshelf with its top shelf ripped off.
Welcome back!
Contractually, I was not obligated to set foot in my classroom until 8am this morning. (I never go to school that late, but that’s beside the point) Had I done so, and been faced with that horror of a classroom 20 minutes before children arrive, I think I simply would have turned around and walked out, taking the day off.
Instead, I sighed long-sufferingly, and spent a couple of hours shoving my classroom back into some semblance of order. As a result, I was a bit under-prepared for the first day back, but I worked it out. The whole thing was pretty darn irritating.
