Slice of Life: Clean-up 3/28

I am participating again this year in the Slice of Life challenge in which we write a slice every day in March. If you are interested in joining in, visit the Two Writing Teachers blog for more information.

Today at school, we had a clean sweep. Our principal arranged to have volunteers come in and help us clean out our school. There were piles and piles of things stored in coat rooms and closets. As many of you know, we teachers are packrats. It is hard to get rid of things that might be useful someday. However, the reality is that most of us forget about what we have stored and then the next teacher inherits that old junk. 

I was so happy to be able to go in today and organize things. There was a metal cabinet in my coat room that was full of "science" supplies going back at least 20 years. It was so nice to be able to have volunteers work in my classroom and clear out that cabinet. I was able to quickly sort through the junk that was in there and then throw away tons of stuff. A quick wipe down later and now I have a bunch more storage space and will be able to organize better. 

The best thing about today was that I learned about two great organizations in my community that I hadn't heard of before. The volunteer effort was organized by Blackboard Volunteer Corps. This group is a service group that is organizing volunteers to come into schools and help out. Our school was their second project. It was really amazing to see so many people from the community turn out to give us their time. The other group is an organization called NEWaukee. They are a group that is working to try to keep young talent in Milwaukee by helping young professionals with many things. One branch of their organization is a service branch. They like to set up projects with different organizations each month so that their members can try out different volunteer efforts and possibly find a group they want to help on a more regular basis. 

I was pleasantly surprised by how many people were at school today and volunteering their Saturday mornings to give us a hand. They were all so happy to be helping out and they were willing to do anything I needed them to do. My classroom is cleaner than it was and I got to learn about some great groups in my community.