I found out that I had been placed for an online teaching position a couple days before “Teacher Work Week” in my building. The chaos of the building was already in an uproar and I am sure my news of leaving for a year, did not help anything settle. My principal did not reach out to me. My admin did not reach out to me until days later. I get it. I am leaving. Bon-voyage! It was still bitter sweet even for just a year’s absence. I was leaving a job I was very used it, surrounded by people who are like family and leaving my position as coordinator for my department. Something I have been doing for going on six years. However, I still had one more visit. I had to go back to my building and settle my belongings.
I had already been earlier in the spring when I grabbed what I could for our remote learning with students until the end of the year. This time I was going to snag my personal things.
Back in June I had to clean out my classroom and label everything to be moved. I took my posters and twinkling lights off my walls. I put all of my colored pencils and texts in a box. I had only spent a year in the room and I was already moving to yet another location. Welcome to the life of being a special education teacher. We are displaced and moved everywhere! But we were all told to get rid of as much stuff in our rooms as we could. COVID had enforced new health conditions including socially distancing eight feet, no six feet, no wait I think three feet apart. It has changed so much that now it’s just about taking a few desks out of the room. Rooms that are typically filled with 32-35 student desks were now occupied with only 15 desks spread apart and leaving no room for anything else or for the other stuff! You know the stuff! You know the teacher! The teacher that has been in her classroom for over a decade and has a mini fridge filled with Diet Coke. There is a Kuerig in the corner with an ample supply of coffee pods. The creamer is also in the fridge! You can find a small plug in heater under the desk and a rotating fan on top of the desk. Teachers like this have nested! They brought in a loveseat in the corner and their own cherry finished bookshelf lined with a collection of yellow plastic rubber duckies in painted costumes and picture frames with cutesy quotes about being a teacher. You know the one! The one who needs a professional moving company and a small storage unit for their extra stuff! But here we all were! We were being asked to move our stuff……out. But there is no place to put any of it! As I walked through the hallway, I stepped over furniture and boxes that sat outside open classroom doors. Normally when teachers got rid of extra stuff in their rooms, teachers became scavengers! We would all rotate through the halls and find extra chairs or another bookshelf. If we were lucky, a teacher was retiring and no longer needed their overstuffed chair and microwave! I was on a hunt though of another kind. I was looking for my classroom items that were moved to E103 way back in June. Oh, wait. Nope. They were moved to W202. No it was W212. Oh, wait. They are somewhere. That was my hunt for today.
I went to my old classroom from the previous year where my stuff had been but had been labeled and boxed to be moved somewhere else when I was going to be in that same classroom from the previous year all along! Confusing I know. My stuff had definitely been moved. After investigating numerous classrooms and saying hello to several team mates, I found my classroom boxes and my stuff downstairs in a classroom with a new teacher. My boxes were stacked next to a teacher I did not recognize. A newbie. Picture a classic first-year teacher. They are sweet and naive and usually have the appearance of a deer in headlights but they also have not collected STUFF yet! There was plenty of room in the closet and although I was slightly hesitant, I decided to leave some of my stuff in her room. She also had my cute stuffed squirrel on her shelf behind her desk! It looked quite at home too! I swooped up my nameless squirrel and looked at her with my very veteran teacher eyes. I wished her a safe year and walked to my office.
By the time I arrived to my office, my mask was sticking to my face. There was no AC running in the building and I was melting. Teaching in August and September and even October was always a nightmare in our building. The AC was always malfunctioning. We even had a week stretch when the heat was on and they couldn’t figure out how to turn it off! We would all make our way through the main office for something. Why? Because it operated on a separate HVAC system. It was always cool and the heater never malfunctioned and it was wonderful! Must be nice to be an administrator! On the flip side, students were melting at their seats as they sprawled out across their sticky and sweaty desks. Teaching first quarter was always brutal.
My office had been cleaned during our closure for remote learning in the spring and my stuff had been picked up off the floor and stacked on my desk. Even my little plug-in heater! Everything was there except my chair! My black desk chair that swiveled and comforted me in my long hours editing IEPs, was missing! Who stole my chair? I was beyond ticked off at this point! Panic started to hit. I was going to be gone from my office for a year. I didn’t want to leave too much stuff because it seems like people are coming in and bargain hunting….for free! Who knows what would be left when I returned! So I decided to box up my framed pictures, but I was leaving my taped pictures on my wall and cabinet to show that I still reside here! I pushed huge boxes down the hall to the outside door and stacked them there to take home. I tried to hurry and go unnoticed. I didn’t want to look like I was vacating my very ideal office space! I had my eye on this office for several years! It was finally mine and I refused to give it up. I had already nested here! My stuff was here! Over fifteen years in this building gives seniority right? Before I left for the day and my year of absence, I grabbed my sticky notes. It was my last desperate move. I wrote my name in bold which a black sharpie on each note, “Erica’s STUFF” and I stuck them everywhere. I stuck them on my desk, my shelves, my other chair and everywhere! If you walked in, all you would see is a sea of yellow stickiness! No one was going to take my stuff. I had nested here in this office!
As I was dripping with sweat carrying my last box, my principal walked down the hallway. He glanced my way, “Hey. How’s it going?” He walked by me before I could respond in time. I am leaving I thought. I am leaving my position as special education coordinator and I am leaving my sweet new sixth graders and caseload of students on IEPs. I am leaving. I shifted my box and continued walking out through the door. The door closed behind me. I looked back. When one door closes, another door opens. See you guys in a year.” I wiped the tear as I headed to my car.