Yesterday I started thinking of the things I need to accomplish before returning to school after Christmas. Thankfully, I have very little that I must get done, and it struck me how things have changed through the years.
Many years ago when I taught on a quarter system, it was common practice for teachers to require students to turn in research papers before Christmas so we would have the break to get them graded.
What were we thinking?
In those days we used to budget our vacation time by tabulating how many papers we had to grade daily in order to finish them on time. It was a thankless job because when we returned the papers the first day back from Christmas vacation, we then had to suffer student complaints about grades and return angry parent phone calls.
This morning I remembered a particularly interesting time of collecting research papers many years ago. My eighth graders had to give me their research papers on the final day before Christmas vacation. As I remember, the papers had to be 7-8 typed pages. In those days, I used to have a small, colorful Snoopy trash can I used to collect papers. As I walked around the classroom all day, students placed their papers into the can.
As happens in many schools, the day before the break included lots of fun, laughter, and food, and we were all exhausted at the end of the day. I supervised students and waved good-bye as the buses pulled out of the parking lot.
When I returned to my classroom later that afternoon, I discovered that my colorful Snoopy garbage can was EMPTY.
I ran through the halls and discovered that the custodians had moved through the halls quickly in order to empty the trash because they wanted to begin their vacations as quickly as the rest of us. The garbage from my hall had already been dumped in the dumpster at the back of the building.
Another teacher and I opened the dumpster, saw all of the garbage interspersed with half-eaten holiday treats and paper streaked with holiday punch.
“Do you really want to pull out all of this garbage and rescue those research papers?” she asked.
“What would you do?” I replied.
“I would close the dumpster and forget the papers.”
And, I did.
I had a lovely holiday that year, and when January rolled around and I told the students what happened, they laughed, and I never had one complaint from a student or parent. Since this was back in the dark ages when students actually typed their papers on typewriters, students did not have back-up copies that they could submit, and it would have been cruel to make students go back and rewrite the papers.
It was a quiet, stress-free, happy holiday!
Of course, I never again used a trash can to collect student papers!