Inheriting Someone Else’s Mess
Unless you are lucky enough to start teaching in a brand new building, chances are that you will inherit someone else’s mess when you accept a position in a school. What do you do with all that stuff? What if you already have your own stuff? What if you’re a seasoned teacher and you have a LOT of your own stuff? I can walk you through cleaning up after someone else so you can claim the space as your own.
There are four different general scenarios to consider here. You are going to enter this new classroom either with or without your own belongings. We’ll consider both situations separately. Next, you will either have a lot of time, or very little time to clear out the old stuff and decide what to do with it. We’ll consider both of those scenarios separately, too.
In all 4 of those situations, you are going to start the same way:
Assess the situation!
Step One: Meet with your new immediate supervisor
(dean, assistant principal, principal, grade-level lead etc.) and ask specifically about the curriculum materials you will be provided and required to use.
Ideally, you will have this meeting before your actual classroom set up day. Bring something to label items with, or a box to put things in. You are going to ask specifically if there are the following things:
textbooks that are currently used for your subject(s)
manipulatives etc. that the school expects you to use for your subject(s)
larger pieces of furniture that the school expects you to have in your classroom
Are there materials that have been ordered that are not delivered yet? *Think subscriptions, science kits, math kits, novel sets etc. This will be important later if you need a place to store things you didn’t expect.
If you can put these things in a labeled box, that is ideal. Write on a sticky note and put it on each item. Your future self will love that you wrote down what the school expects you to keep and use. Trust me, you will not remember on the day you want to start cleaning up your new room.
Step Two: Assess the current state of your new classroom.
Ideally, you would complete this step on the same day you meet with administration about the curriculum in the classroom. Just like you would do when you are working through the Getting Started System of Cleaning and Organizing Your Classroom Space, the very first thing you need to do in a new-to-you classroom is assess what you’re working with.
Stand in the doorway of your room and look around! Spend time looking at each wall, first as a whole. What do you notice? What do you like? Write these things down!
Next, start getting picky! Write down any noticeable concerns you have that you think will need to be addressed by either the cleaning staff, or the maintenance staff.
Write down any noticeable concerns you have that you will want to address yourself, such as measuring for curtains.
You might even want to plug something into each outlet if it’s an older building. I learned the hard way that two outlets in my classroom couldn’t be used at the same time. Yikes!
Open and close the windows. Do they work and lock as they should?
Test your classroom key- does it work the way it should?
Are there blinds? Do they work?
If there is a sink or bathroom, turn on the water. Does it drip? Is there a smell coming from the drain? Does the toilet flush? Does it stop filling or do you have to jiggle the handle?
Turn on all the lights- do all of the bulbs work? Do all of the light switches work?
Are there any issues with the ceiling itself?
Step Three: Send an email or complete a work order
for the things you cannot or should not fix yourself.
Before you start to clean out anything in a new space, you absolutely must let the appropriate people in your school know of anything that needs repair or to be replaced. If you see lightbulbs out, broken cabinets, bulletin boards falling off the wall, etc. your priority is to let administration know so they can make sure they are fixed. You want to make sure whoever is responsible for those tasks has enough time to complete them as possible. With companies being short staffed, it may take weeks to get tasks done and if you wait until your classroom is all set up before you mention that you need a cabinet door fixed, you may be dealing with that broken door until December. When you are given your set of keys, politely ask what the procedures are for dealing with anything broken etc.
Step 4: Begin Cleaning OUT
If you have limited time, such as a week or less, from being able to access the classroom to your first day with students, then you are going to have to make some tough decisions quickly. The previous teacher may have had good intentions of leaving you several things, and maybe they make sense. Or they may have just retired and left without taking a single thing. In either case, YOU are left to make the decisions about it now and you will have to come to terms with what you will do with these items. Keep-Toss-Donate. I do not recommend getting rid of perfectly good materials because you feel rushed and stressed! The last thing you want to find out is that there was a good reason the old teacher left multiple sets of Hot Wheels tracks for a science lesson you didn’t know about the first day you started. In my opinion, it’s easier and smarter to box things and make a concrete plan to sort and purge. If you have limited time, you’ll want to dedicate it to making your classroom inviting not deciding on every little thing, and if you have a lot of time you can easily build sort-one-box-a-day into your schedule for this task.
If you have very little of your own items to store, this will be easier to dedicate a space in your classroom for the materials you will sort and purge later. I have a great system for purging items in your classroom that you could absolutely use in this situation. You do not need to purge it all at once before you start teaching students.
Line up a few boxes or totes on a workspace like a table. Choose boxes that will either stack in a corner (not ideal, but you have to do what you can with limited time and you can always cover with a piece of fabric or a table cloth to make it look better) or that will fit in a cabinet out of sight.
An alternative to storing many boxes of mystery items at school is to take them home and sort through them there. HOWEVER, you have to make a plan to actually sort them and not make enemies with the people with whom you live by having stacks and stacks of boxes in your home/garage/storage space.
Begin emptying cabinets. Put the materials you are taking out into these boxes in categories that seem to go together. However, don’t overthink this step or you will be stuck here all day or week. Just put things in boxes and know that you will come back to it later.
Do not include the items from step one that you were told that are specifically needed to teach your subject area(s). You will need to dedicate a space for those items.
Label the outside of the boxes or totes to identify the materials inside. The more specific you can be, the better.
Keep any baskets, containers, bowls, and such out so that you can utilize them until you know your full storage needs in this new classroom. **See my post about containers!
Step 5: Begin Putting Things Where You Want Them
and Bring Your Materials IN
In this step, you are going to focus on what you want and need to keep. These are the things that you were told are specifically needed to teach your subject(s), and any items you brought with you that are your own. Read my post about setting up your classroom for my system for this.
Step 6: Make a Plan and Commit to It!
After you have set up your classroom, you have to commit to dealing with all the items the other person left behind. In some cases, it might be things from multiple former teachers. I recommend doing this step in 15-minute increments, one per day. If you do it all at once, you will lose the motivation to continue to sort and clean in your classroom on a regular basis. You will very quickly have the same sort of mess, it just is YOUR mess now, instead of someone else’s. Take one box at a time (or if you used cabinet space choose one section at a time) and set a timer for 15 minutes. Don’t empty the whole thing and then have to deal with a giant pile. Take things out one at a time and make a decision.
Do you want to Keep-Toss-Donate?
Keep anything that is useful in your subject(s) and put it where you want it to go.
Consider re-purposing items if you’re not sure how they were used before. Just because the previous teacher used it one way doesn’t mean you have to do the same. On the same note, you don’t have to keep someone else’s stuff, either. If it’s just more clutter, it makes sense to get rid of it.
Throw away anything that is outdated, destroyed, or missing pieces (unless you know you saw them while cleaning).
Find out the system for donating items to other teachers in the building. Are you supposed to set things in a specific place or send an email?
