Needed: Organizational Skills

Organization has never been...one of my strong suits. If you had taken a peek into my high-school backpack, you would have seen a couple of text books, several crumpled-up papers (some dating back months), and probably some sort of spilled candy. I know, I know. I'm not proud. I'm also ashamed to tell you that this same backpack accompanied me to college, only there I had heavier books and whiskey minis replaced the candy. Just kidding about the last part. Come to think about it, that backpack is now in the possession of my youngest sister, Caroline, so I know its legacy continues. Except even worse.

Anyways, you can imagine the sort of pitfalls that come with being a teacher and having zero organizational skills. If I found it hard to keep up with my own--one person's--papers, times that by 83 and mull it over. Not pretty.

I have worksheets cascading out of my closet, lab conclusions carpeting the floor of my bedroom. "If you have faith, you can move mountains." Yeah, I believe that one because I do it every day when I open my car door. Stacks of tests have taken up residence in the passenger seat now, where friends and loved ones used to ride. On some particularly stressful mornings, I find myself talking to them...

I reach into my purse on Saturday afternoon, perhaps fishing for my wallet to purchase something I can't afford. Something trivial to make myself feel better and push Monday out of my mind. "Cash or credit?" the cashier asks, smiling. I look down at my hand and mumble. "Umm...do you take vocabulary foldables?"

I roll over in the morning to greet--no, not the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with--an "exit ticket" signed by Dwight Jefferson. First of all, how in the heck did it get IN MY BED, and second of all, Dwight is about the LAST thing I want to think about first thing in the morning.

Because these papers are taking over my personal space and reminding me of school every time I wake up, get in the car, walk in my room, reach in my purse or open the refrigerator (?), I have tried to refrain from taking up any more for the time being. That being said, I just took on a whole new beast of a grading project.

The water droplet story. I was so proud of this little idea. I had the kids imagine themselves as water droplets and draw little strips of paper that would send them to the Animal Station, the Cloud Station, the Plant Station, the Mountain Station, the Ocean Station, etc. From there, they would draw a new strip and find out where their next destination was. The point of the exercise was to show them how water cycles through the, uh, Water Cycle. For instance, they might start in a cloud, rain down to a stream where they were drunk by a cow, peed out into the ground, taken up by a plant, and so on and so forth. Then they were to create a children's book out of their story.

Well, some of my students still might not be keen on the finer points of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation, but no one can accuse them of lacking creativity. Some of my favorites so far:

"Tick-Tock Drop" by Ananais, featuring a water droplet on the cover donning a doo-rag and a Flava-Flav style clock around its neck

"Tu-Drop" (like Tupac, only a raindrop), by Dwight. On the cover, Tu-Drop is wearing a bandana, a chain, and a shirt reading "THUG LIFE." He wanted to know all about the water cycle "because everybody in the hood was hella cyclin', ya digg??"

"The Tragic Fall of Charcelle the Raindrop," by none other than Quinn. The inspirational story of a young water droplet who goes through many phase changes in life but learns the invaluable lesson that, "No matter where you go or how you change, you must stay true to yourself and be proud of who you are--water." The closing illustration was a picture of a water drop with a thought bubble exclaiming, "F*** Solids!!"

I'm going to go to bed now...if I can find it, that is.