What My Desk Held:
Coffee mugs repurposed to hold pens and pencils.
Peppermints. Gum. Granola bars. Dry cereal.
My writer’s notebook.
Paper. Stacks and stacks of paper. Papers to fill out. Papers to pass out. Papers to grade. Copy paper. Lined paper. Colored paper. Construction paper.
A red stapler. Usually empty.
Kleenex. Hand sanitizer. Lotion.
Fake plants. Because I couldn’t keep real ones alive.
Tissue paper flowers twisted onto pipe cleaners, a gift from a student.
A tip jar. Also a gift from a student. Sometimes it even contained tips.
A set of plastic evil eyes, another gift from a student.
Books. Stacks and stacks of books. Classroom read-aloud books. Books I was reading myself. Book stacks for matchmaking. New books. Books that had been returned to the classroom library. Library books. Books students had loaned me.
A computer.
Lesson plans. On post-its, in my writer’s notebook, printed from the Internet, copied from teaching books.
Notes about improving lesson plans. On post-its, in my writer’s notebook, scrawled on the back of print-outs from the Internet. What didn’t work. How to tweak it next time.
Empty binders for the lesson plans I never managed to organize.
A student. Always a student sitting in my chair.
What My Desk Never Held:
Me
This post was inspired by Breathing In at Reflections on the Teche.
the dirigible plum 
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