This week I have found my self spending a lot of time reflecting on how to best manage the classroom when it's clean up time. Over the past few weeks Laine (my co-teacher) and I have attempted a wide variety of ways to organize clean up time and yet it seems as though even though we are slowly getting better, chaos still prevails.
When I reflect upon clean up time in my days of middle school I remember my art teacher's assigning each individual student a task and holding us accountable. Although at times when students finished their jobs early, chaos would still occur. When I was in high school I experienced a non chaotic clean up routine. The teacher had set in place the mentality that each student was responsible for their own mess. This teacher instructed students to quietly wait at their seats if they completed cleaning up and would only dismiss students if the table in front of them was clean. This week to organize clean up time, Laine and I dismissed students by table to do specific clean up jobs. This strategy helped calm some of the chaos of all the students moving at once, however, multiple students still weren't participating and avoided helping.
Thinking about what I experienced in my past experiences as a student and about my recent experiences teaching at Polaris, I think the next step in modifying clean up time is holding each student accountable. One way to hold students accountable would be to write down what job each student will be responsible for and add a visual element. For example, if Laine and I give each student a "clean up hat" which is color coded to specific jobs, it will be easier for us to ensure that students are where they need to be.
The image I created above is a representation of how I envision clean up time should appear. It may appear chaotic with every student moving about the room fulfilling different jobs, however there is a structure to the madness. The students are moving around with purpose. The multiple colors and designs represent the multiple tasks being fulfilled. The repetition within the work represents the order within the chaos.
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