A few days ago, I was chatting with a new manicurist at the beauty salon about my job. (This is a Miss Eyre post, by the way. I'm sure NYC Educator's nails are always very nice, though, too.) I said that I wasn't teaching summer school, though summer school is going on back at my school, and I had taken every possible precaution against summer "borrowing"/relocating/disapparating of my classroom stuff. I described the steps I had taken and she, perhaps slightly taken aback, responded that my efforts seemed quite thorough.I'm a bit of a pack rat, and the lack of Teacher's Choice this year makes me ever more so. Not to brag, but I have what is probably the best classroom library in my school, accumulated now over the course of 4+ years, much of it with my own money, sweat, and time that was NOT reimbursed. And that's really fine. I love it when kids have a wide variety of books from which to choose; I even secretly love it when a few of those books walk away every year, never to be returned, because a kid liked a book so much that s/he wanted to keep it. But will I have some slightly unscrupulous colleague, or a summer school student that I don't know, wandering off with my books? Call me selfish, but no.
Still, I can't help but worry. I refuse to set foot in my school for a couple more weeks yet, but I continue to be concerned about what is going on there in my absence. My old school was much stricter with the folks who used our facilities in the summer than my current school seems to be, not to mention the fact that my classroom could still be relocated entirely by the time the first day rolls around.
At least there's air conditioning in there, though. If there wasn't, I imagine I could expect to have half the stuff stolen from my room out of sheer heat-related frustration and rage.
Have you ever come back from summer vacation to find that some of your classroom supplies have taken their own (permanent) vacation?
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