I was watching television this evening and saw the preview for the latest reality TV craziness called Animal Hoarders!  I instantly thought, “Well I would rather hoard pets than trash!”  Then I realized how easy it would be to have a show called Teacher Hoarders (teachers who hoard school supplies, not students or animals).  Here’s an example:

Sometimes a teacher is in need of yarn at the spur of the moment.  She (never he) sends a note to alllllllllllll the teachers she thinks may have extra yarn to loan her unexpectedly.  Each teacher she sends the note to, reads it and thinks to herself, “Is the yarn easy to get to or do I have to hunt for it?” (hint: sign of hoarding)  By the time the student monitor goes to each of these teachers for yarn, the lesson has lost its excitement.  Why?  Because when the child comes back WITHOUT yarn, the teacher will tell the class, “We will do this another day because no one in the whole school has any yarn!” (hint: placing blame is a sign of hoarding disorder)  The class grumbles and the teacher says, “Well let me look really fast to see if I have any yarn.” (hint: signs of hoarding coming).

The teacher opens the “supply closet.”  She stands there, with her mouth agape, hands on hips, back to the class and scans the closet without touching anything first.  She knows there is yarn in there somewhere.  She moves a few board games with missing pieces, empty scissor racks, and old jigsaw puzzles out of the way, and there lies 5 packs of colored construction paper!  No yarn.  Does she bother to keep looking for yarn?  No, because she is more excited to have found the pink construction paper that she has been looking for since Valentine’s Day!

Yes, teachers hoard, but it’s only because we are never sure if we will ever get paper again!
And the reason this teacher is a “she” and never a “he” is because if he had been teaching and needed yarn, he would have told the class to be ready for his magic trick and to keep their eyes on the imaginary yarn!

This school year was particularly difficult and I have been reflecting on it this summer.  Many people who don’t work in education think that summer vacation is the “three months off” that teachers are given.  Well, quite the contrary, this summer it’s the few weeks off that I have been “given” in order to plan lessons for the next 180 days minus 7 furlough days (173).  It’s the few weeks I have been “given” to figure out how I will manage the cuts on my paychecks while “enjoying” a whole week off for Thanksgiving this coming  November.  It’s the time I have to decide which workshops I will take in July, which program I can teach for in August, and when the money will actually show up on my paycheck, because of course teachers aren’t paid for at least 2 months after attending a paid training.
Basically, I am spending this summer “vacation” working for delayed gratification…every awesome teacher does this, right?