Sometimes it’s all about the chairs
by Ron Sherman • • 0 Comments
I can recall the first time I toured my school, being struck by the fact that there was a lot of stuff there. I mean, a lot. Storage rooms were filled with unopened manipulatives; curriculum guides from the 1990s, still in the shrink wrap. Files, books, posters, the list went on and on. On top of that, this was a school with a lot of staff turnover, so there were boxes of things which were left by previous staff members who “gifted” these very valuable resources to the next generation taking their place.
- this is not my school, but is similar to what I found there. Are there spots in your school that look like this?
Over the years, this had created a building that couldn’t breathe under the weight of all the stuff in it. And at a deeper level, I understood that it was a school that couldn’t develop it’s own culture and identity, it couldn’t move forward into it’s own future, because in many ways it served as a museum, and repository for others’ long-forgotten materials.
Over the past 2 years, I’ve made it a goal to help cleanse this school of all the things no one needs. I have to admit, with this task comes a certain amount of guilt. I’ve written previously how the principal’s most important resource is time, how we need to guard it jealously. That we shouldn’t do the things that made us good teachers when we’re administrators,