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Room 166 became "mine" in August 1989, when I was moved into the building from a portable class because my 6th period students and I celebrated the return of their graded massive research papers required for high school juniors with a “mortgage burning” of those papers. I had prepared, I thought, extremely comprehensively: I used my own hibachi, the kids and I had 24 gallon jugs of water and Sydney’s brother was on-hand as an official representative of the Middleburg Volunteer Fire Department. The class and I were having a great time as each student roasted 4 marshmallows over the charring remains of his or her research. All went well until the principal drove by in a golf cart after tending to a problem on the baseball field…He seemed calm as he enjoyed a couple of marshmallows and he never reprimanded me BUT the next fall when we returned to campus, I was in a class room and the tennis coach had my portable.
My initial
reaction to my new “home” was less than wonderful. I had relished my portable.
Its isolation allowed opportunities to be louder than normal, to have
occasional classes “on the lawn” as my students and I sat under the trees
bordering the football practice field and to regulate the temperature as it had
its own unit air conditioning.
However, I
am nothing if not flexible in my Pollyanna-ish attitude toward life. It was not
long before room 166 began to work its charms on me.
One charm was its size. It was HUGE
- my portable had been 20 feet by 20 feet; room 166 is 41 feet by 41 feet
(originally designed to be the Drama Room.) I felt like I was in a ballroom.
The same 30 student desks that filled P-22 from side to side sort of floated
around 166 with all its space.
Another charm was room 167.
Technically (or architecturally?) it is the storage closet attached to room
166. It was the envy of many of my peers as only five classrooms in the entire
building have attached closets. It is 25 feet long and 9 feet wide…not really
big enough to be a classroom but plenty big enough to house two large bulletin
boards covered with pictures, papers, Thank-You’s and candids from decades of
kids, a cafeteria table, 3 filing cabinets, 6 garage shelving units and the bottom part
of a kitchen cabinet unit yet still have room to turn around.
In all those drawers, shelves and cupboards,
I kept the essences of my career: class sets of 3 literature books, stacks of
construction paper, 2 boom boxes, 1 karaoke machine, 33 years of lesson plan
files and sample student papers, 4 cartons of duplicating paper, 7 hot glue
guns and refills, a small college-room refrigerator, a steamer trunk of old
magazines for projects and the only remaining eMac computer at Middleburg High
(alas, it had no printer but it did allow undisturbed Internet access).
Though I appreciated 167, I
inadvertently discovered it held a mystic allure for my students. I had given
my English III class the following bell-ringer prompt: “What’s your favorite
room at MHS?”I expected their responses to include the gym, the locker room,
the band room, the cafeteria, or the atrium. I did not anticipate the seven
responses, which named my room’s closet.
For Justin, it was the place where “I can go when stuff is just too
much.” Samantha cherished being able to “kept my lunch there so I don’t have to
bring my Hannah Montana lunch box around school with me all day.” The room offered Alex a place “to hide my
computer so I could use it class and my Mom wouldn’t worry about me losing it
at school.” Rennie and Cindy agreed that the room was a “quiet place to read
without having to fight the ladies in the library who always want to talk about
what I’m reading.” Sondra noted that “whenever I am stuck for a writing topic,
I just go to Ms. Mayer’s closet and look on her photo wall – one of those
pictures always gives me a writing topic.” My favorite rationale came from Lexi
who believed “Ms. Mayer’s back room is like my Grammie’s cellar in Vermont – I
never know what I m going to find when I open a drawer or move a box. It’s like
a big treasure chest.”
Sometimes a closet is just a closet
and sometimes it’s a refuge or an adventure.
