Dear Families,
When you enter the classroom, you will notice Sharpies hanging at eye level above every cubby. PLEASE use them to label your child’s belongings AND your child. Unfortunately, if we must give more than a couple of reminders, there will be logical consequences. We will:
- Assure your spouse that you have Declan’s missing water bottle. We put it in your hand at dismissal. Yup.
- Construct a set of wind chimes from your family’s stray metal forks, spoons, and sporks, and we’ll send it home as a gift/alarm clock.
- “Borrow” Patagonia, North Face, Reima, Land’s End, and L.L.Bean-branded items to dress our own children.
- Dress a scarecrow in children’s unlabeled garments. We’ll label it with your first name (Chad? Brad?) Your child will want to greet it on the way in and out of the building each day. It won’t add too much time to your routine.
- Create a “lost and found” that changes locations daily.
- Not create a lost and found, but encourage you to check it.
- Call for some impromptu professional days to allow teachers time to inventory our lost and founds.
- Set up a Donors’ Choose page to purchase a label maker. We’ll name the highest donation tier “Brad’s Circle.”
- List each unlabeled item on Poshmark during rest time. As a result of our inattention, we may neglect to hand out Brain Baskets. Your child might sleep for three hours. Good luck with bedtime.
- Label your child’s belongings with another child’s name.
- Use the inner tags of unclaimed apparel to launch a study of where our clothes come from. Children will learn to identify ethical business practices and conduct an in-depth analysis of each clothing company’s compliance. Burdened yet empowered by this knowledge, your child will soon ask you to sew them homemade clothes. (There’s a Sharpie above the cubbies for labeling those as well.)
- Show up at your workplace during a board meeting, brandishing two pairs of identical black snow pants. “Do the Land’s End pair (XS 4-5) or the L.L. Bean pair (4T) belong to Ava?”
- On a Friday afternoon, too tired to even find the door, we will pace around the classroom, fish tank half-cleaned, sad desk salad half-eaten, holding a single mitten. We will circle the cubbies, whisper-chanting each student’s name. When your child comes in from after school to retrieve their backpack, they will not be creeped out at all.
- Dutifully label the items ourselves in extra-fine Sharpie, and apologize for doing so.
Looking forward to a great school year,
Your child’s teachers
