Abstract:

"It is like a little death, this sorting out, and I am filled with many memories of my teaching career," says Laura Jones as she cleans out a basement of the supplies she used as a pre-school special education teacher.

Jones, L.R. (2004). What I left behind in the basement. Teacher Leaders Network diaries. Retrieved from the Teacher Leaders Network 11 Apr 2008. Link: http://www.teacherleaders.org/old_site/diaries04_05/LJ44_04_05.html

Full Text:

What I Left Behind in the Basement

"All things change, and we change with them."
Alexander Pope

Seventeen bags of trash, over 20 hours of hard, bruising work, and stacks and stacks of books and games, and the basement is just about done. I have laid my eyes and my hands on every book, toy, game and art supply from my previous life as a preschool special education teacher. I have made decisions about what to keep and what to sell, and I am sad. It is like a little death, this sorting out, and I am filled with many memories of my teaching career.

I take every preschool book off the 10 shelves and sort them into two piles—keep them for my future grandchildren or sell them. When I start out, I have no real criteria in mind, but I am quickly able to decide how to decide. I only keep books that have beautiful art or stories that move me deeply. That means, however, that I am selling over 400 books that have instructional value and great memories.

I hesitate over so many: Green Eggs and Ham is one. Last year we used my newly-developed digital photography skills and made and published multiple copies of hand-drawn books with the caption "I won't eat green eggs and ham, but I will eat _____." My students filled in the blanks with the most outrageous foods their little 3 and 4 year old imaginations could come up with. And there's Donald Crews' beautiful Freight Train book. I spent hours tracing and cutting out train cars in colors to match the book. We glued them onto long connected pieces of perforated computer paper and decorated them with food pictures, macaroni wheel shapes, and smoky grey cotton balls. And It Looked like Spilt Milk, an old book by Charles Shaw made of torn shapes on blue paper—the first few years we made our own books with white paint and blue construction paper. Last year I recreated the book on my computer with the animation program Buildability and the kids could watch the designs grow before their eyes.

And the games. Oh my, the games. I consider myself somewhat of an authority on preschool games. After all, if you can play a game five to six times a day for a week with children ages 3-5, you know if that is a fun game or not. I have to tell myself that I cannot keep games around for sentimental reasons. And I debate about keeping the bags of dice—all shapes, colors and sizes—but decide to set them aside for GEMS. We can use them for probability games. I hold Ravensburger's Destination Discovery in my hand, trying to decide whether to keep it for posterity. I love those little bikes. But little bike playing pieces are no reason to keep a game. I put the Geomags into the pile for the GEMS club also—there is science in those. I keep the Fisher-Price tools and all of the F-P food, including the McDonalds soda fountain and the Wedding cake sets.

I laugh at the memory of using Race to the Roof, another Ravensburger game. Games from Europe are better than ours, and generally very different. I had to paste paper over the picture of the little boy sitting in the bathtub with his dad—too controversial for the red state I live in. And I sigh in relief at the sight of my all-time favorite game, The Lizard and the Caveman. That is a keeper for sure. Where else can a four-year old live out his or her fantasies of becoming a dinosaur and capturing and eating an adult? This game gives children all the power in the world, and then it is over and everything returns to normal. We played it over and over, and I still could.

I sort through tubs and tubs of craft stickers and supplies, stored and labeled by theme and holiday. I had forgotten that pasta came in so many shapes—dinosaurs, hearts, Mickey Mouse, space ships, wheels, Christmas trees, bow ties—I had them all. I throw them away, although I reflect wistfully on the wonderful noodle unit I did using my Fisher-Price pasta machine and homemade garlic-flavored play dough. I plan to sell the boxes of stencils and rubber stamps, wonderful language development tools. And then I find the glitter.

I love glitter. I have red glitter, blue glitter, purple glitter, green glitter, gold glitter, silver glitter, and multi-colored glitter. We used so much glitter at Christmas and Valentine's Day that I would have to set aside Saturdays in both December and February to have my car professionally vacuumed. And I used to ask my daughter to look me over before I left the house in the evenings to make sure I didn't go to meetings with glitter on my face. I miss glitter already.

I look at my pile of things to return to the preschool program, my huge sale piles, and the small cache I am keeping. And I realize that I am selling, donating and returning a vast resource of professional knowledge along with my beloved toys and games. And then, it hits me! I could create the "virtual basement!" I could photograph each item with my digital camera, describe how I used it for instruction, and make a fabulous professional resource for other teachers and families.

I am crazy. What do I think I am, the Smithsonian?

I haul the bags of trash upstairs to the garage, where they sit until Friday for movement out to the curb. I turn out the lights and leave the basement and my previous life until the sale in September. It was a good life but I have moved on. I have to let it all go. I have to.

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