Territorial Teachers

I am without a doubt a highly territorial teacher when it comes to my classroom. I spent countless hours this past summer deconstructing the place (heater and all) and cleaning it, then painting it and meticulously organizing and decorating the whole place. At the end of this somewhat nutty undertaking, the place actually looked like a pleasant elementary school classroom as opposed to a filthy hospital waiting room, which is what it previously resembled. Since then, I've continued to work on the room and spend WAY too much of our personal funds on things for the room and my students to use while in it.

And then Saturday School started.

I do not teach Saturday School. While I like the concept behind it a lot, the way our district does it there are three schools grouped together plus the students from the alternative school. One teacher gets this motley group for a few hours each weekend that's not a holiday. Nice idea, right? The issues I had with it were that it is only open to the lowest performing students according to our state test and that, as a teacher, you will only see the vast majority of these kids for a grand total of 6-9 hours per month. Ehhh.... not so appealing to me. I was also not inclined to ask to teach it because once you tack on the 45 minutes each way commute, I'd have no Saturday left to spend with, yep, my former students and my husband on the tutor-and-prep-for-college path. Our school is the site, however, so my room--sans me--is the place to be for fourth grade reading and language arts.

I wasn't horribly opposed to this idea, since I figured a teacher in another teacher's classroom would take the utmost of care for it. And, for all I can tell, the lady does. But the kids? Not mine. Not trained to my rules and expectations and procedures and all of that. And for that teacher, who gets them only a few hours a week, how likely is it that she can really get them into shape to take care of the space that is, likewise, not their teacher's or their class's space? With the exception of the handful of my students that go, they are mostly strangers in a strange land.

The first week, it was a little messy and the desks were askew, fine. But last week? They'd left the AC on and froze it up, meaning it didn't work for HOURS on the 102 degree Monday. They used all of my pencils, and they "disappeared" them as well. And, despite another teacher giving them some, they went into my hand sanitizers and used up several. Grrrr. So last Friday, I put up EVERYTHING--from the pencil sharpener to the Kleenex. But I forgot the box of stickers....

Who wants to guess what they stole this weekend?