Shiny and bright, the newly waxed floors in the hallway beckoned, like the backpacks and pencil cases and faces of the children soon to walk these hallways.

Around the corner, my classroom waited. My fear each year: Would I be able to make magic happen again? I urged my feet forward, but I was ready to bolt.

To the left, as I opened the door, were all of the boxes and storage bins, pillows and blankets, curriculum materials and units of study, crammed together and off the floor in June so that cleaning could happen while the teachers were gone.

In the middle of the room, the desks – too many? not enough? – in rows, organized by a well-meaning custodian. (As we know, rows are not part of education these days, in most classrooms; I only put my desks into rows during standardized testing.) On the other side of the room, the corresponding chairs were not just stacked together but stuck, three and four high. The desks appeared glued to the floor, the wax holding them in its grip. 

At the back of the room, what I wouldn’t let myself focus on just then: those bulletin boards that had to be redone. Why, again, didn’t I set them up in June? Oh, yes – I was desperate to get out of there. 

And somewhere to the right, out of the range of this photograph, stood the bookshelves that had to be emptied for cleaning (did they really?) and thus needed to be reorganized every. single. year.

It was, quite simply, overwhelming.

I started with the seating, as always; I needed to get chairs under desks and desks in groups in order for me to get a visual in my head of what the students themselves would look like in them. Should I do small groups of three and four, or larger groups of five and six? What were my numbers again? 22, 23, 24. So how would the configuration I’m setting up work with each class?

We were always told not to drag the desks and chairs, so as not to damage the newly waxed floors – yet if we didn’t do it, who would, with 40-plus classrooms in the building? The table legs were still sticking to the floor, and the chairs were sticking to each other. I began to wrestle with them, yanking them as needed, fighting to get them in place. I moved them here – then, there. I angled them. I pushed my desk in place – I certainly couldn’t lift it. I was sweating – was the air on? – as I began to create a space that I, and the students I don’t yet know, can live with.

I eyeballed the large back bulletin board as I prepared to leave the room. It’ll do, I thought. Why drag new paper from the back hallway, which would quickly end up creased with my heavy hand? After all, I’ll be putting posters up to hide the damage, and student work will go up there soon enough – at least, before Back to School Night.

After a few hours over multiple days, I was feeling pretty good about the way it was looking . . . until I came back on the first day for staff and remembered that I still needed to do a lot of work on the bookshelves, find some way to clean that rug in the corner, and – oh! find something to do with the supplies I ordered back in May that are now sitting in the front of the room. Somehow, I would have to make room for them in a way that would help me to actually use them. 

Except for finding out that my numbers have changed, and that I’d be having another staff member in the room, and that I would need to reconfigure the desks again.

And on, and on. 

There would be plenty more to do, from now until mid-June of next year. And I knew I wouldn’t always get it right. Some days, I’d feel like I got it all wrong. 

You know what I mean.

(Keep reading. I’m sending a message to you in post #3.)