Teaching outside of the cardboard box

I have taught summer school for the past seven years. Teamed up with my friend, Elisha, that first year was pretty magical. We erected a giant tent in the center of the classroom and conducted lessons from there. In between reciting math facts and reading, we made worms-in-dirt and Oreo cookie spiders while singing about dying cockroaches and Catalina Magdalena.

Subsequent years boasted some pretty memorable moments including the genius implementation of Sundae Fridays, squirrel tag, and the assembly-lined creation of pipe-cleaner mice based on Avi’s rodent-ridden adventure, Poppy. Then there was the infamous year where I cleverly invented a game called “Bounce a tennis ball against a brick wall and catch it.”

I admit that this year, I got off to a bit of a rough start. Surrounded by young, nauseatingly enthusiastic teachers (wait, when did I STOP qualifying for this category?), I growled as I observed their classroom doors, decorated with fun, colorful surfboards and banners. Peering into rooms, I saw reading corners adorned with beach umbrellas and desks sporting cute little supply buckets. To top it off, my across-the-hall neighbor posted a ridiculous sign that read: “Welcome to Camp Learns-a-Lot.” Blah!

Self-reflectively, I assessed my summer school classroom with its bare walls (a blank slate!), my messy desk (Albert Einstein is famous for saying: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”), and the cavernous room devoid of color and overly-obvious nametags (Don’t they already know their names?). It was a far cry from that fun-filled first year. I racked my brain, considering what to do. It was pretty clear that my first impulse, which was to de-face the “Camp Learns-a-Lot” sign, while cathartic, was counter-productive. And then, it came to me.

Our planned read-aloud was Norton Juster’s classic, The Phantom Tollbooth.  I put in a call to my big box connection: Zeches Furniture Store in Warsaw and acquired a refrigerator box.  We started slow, designing the tollbooth based on the description from chapter one. I wrestled the box in the next day and realized that teachers expend WAY too much time creating complicated bulletin boards. I once spent two and a half hours taping a blue construction paper Yangtze River across my classroom floor. What an idiot move. All you have to do to engage students is throw a big box in the center of the room. Done.

I almost cancelled the decoration process of step two because the students were so happy with the box but I couldn't bear the perceived judgment emanating from hallway passers-by when they spotted an arbitrary cardboard box in my room.  So after summer school was over today, Sydney and I hauled the box outside and, armed with spray cans, began the process of transforming it into a magical purple portal. Having seen the maneuver on plenty of cartoons, I licked my finger and held it up to determine wind direction. Prevalent conditions forced us to double-team one side at a time. “Do you like to be high,” I asked considerately, squatting to cover the lower half with a sweeping spray of purple mist. Wondering why my daughter wasn’t coating the top half, I glanced over to see her bent over, laughing hysterically.  

With both barrels blasting, we successfully painted 3/4s of the refrigerator box, 60% of our clothes, and ended up with some pretty fashionable purple highlights in our hair. After ample drying time, we wrestled the now-purple box back into the classroom.  Take that, Camp Learns-a-Lot!

Next on the summer school horizon: I will be transforming the school parking lot into a life-sized place value chart visible from space.