The Decluttered Teacher | Chapter 2: Drink the Kool Aid

Are you ready for your next big step? It is an extremely progressive step. I would even consider this next step paradigm-shifting akin to religious conversion.

On second thought, never mind. It’s too big a step. You’re not ready.

(Wait for it…)

Oh, you’re invigorated by how free your mind, heart, and soul (not to mention your room) feels since you removed the behemoth filing cabinets?

Ok, read on…

Your teacher desk. Get rid of it.

“Oh, helllllll no!” you say in your best Chris Tucker/Chris Rock impersonation.

“Keep Calm and something, something.” We will get through this together. Deep breaths before you hyperventilate. Don’t give up on me. Hear me out. Besides, you said you were ready.

I know that every memory you have of teaching involves a poised matriarchal figure with hands folded atop a neat stack of graded work. Her kind eyes and gentle smile beam out as she sits behind her ordered desk. On her desk rests a few small figurines (usually one with a child next to a small blackboard sporting a cute maxim with backwards s’s) and a picture of her husband and children tilted at a pristine 45 degree angle that she gazes at longingly while her quiet students practice their Spelling words in elegant cursive verging on calligraphy.

Well, it’s time to hang up the denim dress and undo the bun, because you are about to choke on all the chalk dust from clapped erasers.

If you are new to teaching, I’ve got bad news…

You will NEVER sit down.

The good news: you’re so busy, you really don’t notice your body is tired until the kids have been dismissed at the end of the day. Also, this is the one job in which you look at the clock 93 times in one day, but never because you’re waiting for the day to end, always because you’re trying to squeeze in one more factoid, lecture, strategy, maxim, “when I was a kid…”, paragraph, or round of Heads Up Seven Up.

Here’s why we got rid of that deep-drawer, faux wood veneer, icon of the past. Primarily, it becomes a landing pad for every paper you can’t decide what to do with in the moment, and by the end of the week, that landing pad is a full out aircraft carrier for confiscated paper airplanes, ungraded papers, and undistributed “Must Go Home Today” flyers and forms.

Secondly, you just freed up some more floor space.

Thirdly, and definitely most importantly, you aren’t separated from your students, you’re with them, alongside them, among them—you’re Jane Goodall (I’ll work on this analogy for the next edition).

Fourthly, absence of a teacher desk is a conversation starter.

“So, where do you sit?” the teacher from the end of the hall asks.

“With my students,” you reply nonchalantly (maybe just a little haughtily).

“Hunh...With the students?...Interesting,” she mulls, still quite unconvinced.  She’s not yet undergone this evolution.  

So, we’ve still got a veritable Everest in the middle of our classroom, a wall of stacked desks, and twelve and a half random pieces of furniture. And, unless you’re quite handy, the abused, two-legged table should probably go. Does that comparison make you a little sad, too? Now I want to keep the table and make it successful in spite of its differences from “normal” tables. Digression terminated.

Leave the desks. We’ll climb Everest in a bit. Let’s get rid of some more furniture.

“Do I get to keep anything?” you ask, eyes wide, lip aquiver.

Yes, we will actually choose a couple pieces of furniture. But, let’s get rid of everything we don’t need, so we are better able to understand what we will need.

And, one of the primary reasons for furniture in the classroom, even a decluttered one, is for storage. But, before we address that, let’s take a break, grab some fresh air, and caffeinate!