Into limbo

Yesterday was our school's yearbook day. It was one of the most stressful days I've been through all year. As yearbook advisor, I had to coordinate the distribution of over a thousand yearbooks (all individually checked for quality) to more than a thousand students in dozens of classes. Each book is labeled with the student's name and placed in a box for his or her class. For weeks we've been typing labels and organizing books. Without going into too many details, yesterday had me seriously thinking I should go blow the stipend I received for being yearbook advisor on something crazy, because I had just earned it. Big time.

Because I've been pushing so hard to get all the final projects graded, the yearbooks out, etc., I have given very little thought to moving out of my room. Finally, yesterday afternoon, after losing my patience, my temper, and my sanity, I staggered back to my room, thinking that I would take the rest of the day to get caught up and to figure out how I was going to do this moving thing. As I opened the door to my classroom I gasped in surprise. There would be no respite, no afternoon of getting caught up, no leisurely moving things out. My back counter was already piled up four feet high with boxes the teacher who will have this classroom next year had moved in while I was dealing with the yearbook.

So here I am today, taking the posters off my walls and reflecting over the past two years at Lehi Jr. Most of these posters I hung less than a week before school started my first year of teaching. In many ways, this classroom feels an awful lot like home. I've spent so many hours sitting at my desk, covering it with papers, uncovering it bit by bit, entering grades, teaching, talking to students. I still remember the blog I wrote about the first time I saw my classroom. I still have the series of pictures I took as I decorated it step-by-step. Now, as I look around, it looks like someone is playing that slideshow backwards.

Disassembling this place feels like going back in time. More than once, after taking down a poster or flag I remembered that the reason I had hung it in that spot was to cover up a hole in or stain on the wall. Now my desk is like an island, still covered in papers, the little flower pot, and with the stapler, tape dispenser, and tissues at the ready. All around it, my classroom is turning into a barren and increasingly unfamiliar space. Who knew that classrooms were such blank spaces? Spaces that could be filled with an incredible amount of personality and life with just a few colored bits of paper and cloth and the collective experience of the hundreds of students who have come through this room in the last few years. And who knew that all of that personality and shared experiences could be simply wiped away like the notes from my students I cleaned off of my white board this morning?

To make matters even more disorienting, I'm moving out without moving on. The classroom I will be in at my new school is going to be remodeled this summer, and no one knows where it will be or when I will have access to it. So I am moving all of this stuff, so useless outside of a classroom, into Allie's and my spare bedroom. Next week I will turn in the seven keys I have to different doors around this school and receive none to replace them. And while my pocket will feel lighter and more carefree without their considerable weight, I think I will also be somewhat homeless until there are at least few to replace them.

Well, I've run out of things to say and time to type. Don't let my current yearbook-hangover fool you, I think this transfer will be just fine. But cleaning out my classroom while the next teacher slowly piles her things in the corner (she's brought in three more cart loads today) makes me feel like my life here is already ended, even though the last day of school isn't until tomorrow. Somewhere yesterday, Miss E., the 8th grade English teacher at Lehi Jr. died, and I'm just her ghost, a faded spectre shuffling about my "unfinished business" while the living busily and cheerfully move into the vacant space my life once occupied.