Friday, August 29, 2014

A Clean Classroom Is A Happy Classroom

Today one of our custodians told me how easy my room was to clean this summer, how easy it was to wax and polish the floors, because my room was already so clean anyway.

I don't know what goes on in some rooms.  Some people must drag furniture across the floors day and night, their floors look so bad.  Some people allow students to wipe the mud off the bottoms of their shoes using the bookracks under the seat of the desk in front of them.  I've seen the piles of dirt  and/or mud (on those couple days a year around here when it's wet), and it's gross.

I do keep a pretty neat and clean room.  In fact, every custodian who's ever taken care of my room--at all three schools at which I've taught--has made it a point to thank me for making their job easier.  They tell me about having to pick up trash off the floors....

I don't do it for the compliments, I do it because I don't want to teach in a pig sty.  But I'm glad it's clean enough for them to notice, and I'm glad it makes their job easier at no real cost to anyone else.

3 comments:

  1. I think it's the ingrained military habits. Something about a shiny floor makes me happy ... so the first thing I did was to put fuzzy feet on the chair legs.
    http://www.fuzzy-feet.com/

    I have a hardwood floor, plaster ceiling, and plaster walls, so it was also a matter of noise, but the floor stays really nice for much longer than everyone else's.

    It was worth the $0.95 per, but I had to put it on the math department budget because maintenance didn't have it. (Shortsighted, I thought, but there you have it.)

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  2. "...bottoms of their shows"

    Damn those auto fill word spellers ;)

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  3. I can blame that on nothing but my own mistyping, thanks for the correction!

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