So how clean is your staff refrigerator this time of year? Are there piles of paper in the work room that make you a little crazy, or coffee cups in the sink that seem to multiply overnight? No one would ever accuse me of being a tidy person, yet I find myself every spring rolling up my sleeves and cleaning out piles of clutter and dust bunnies like all those normal neat people. There is just something about this season that inspires a fresh start every year, no matter our natural inclinations.

My favorite writer on the topic of spring cleaning for literacy leaders is Shelley Harwayne, who led the Manhattan New School for many years. In Going Public, she writes of why cleanliness matters for a school community:

I adore building-wide cleanliness. I love spring cleaning, as well as cleaning in the dead of winter, fall, and summer. There is a big difference, I think, between works in progress and sheer sloppiness. I have no tolerance for the latter. There is no excuse for teachers to leave a sticky tabletop in the staff room. Likewise, it is unacceptable for students to leave dirty paintbrushes in the slop sink or for parents to leave coffee cups in the poetry reading room....All of this requires, then, that we are willing to pitch in to get the job done....

I remember becoming discouraged one day when I opened the refrigerator door in our staff room. The shelves were bulging with leftover birthday cake, bags of stale bagels, containers of sour milk, and assorted trays of half-eaten lunches. The mess not only looked bad, it smelled bad. Rather than tossing the contents in the wastebasket, I covered the large conference table with mounds of moldy food. I then propped up a sign that read, "You know how crashed cars are sometimes left on the side of the road to remind us to be careful?" My colleagues got the point.

Shelly Harwayne, pages 50 - 51, Going Public

When I supervised student teachers at a local elementary school, one of the first read-alouds I chose each fall was the stretch of Going Public which includes this passage. The teaching interns would chuckle at Shelley's diligence in gathering lost mittens and misplaced articles for short lessons and pep talks in classrooms about the joy of clean workspaces, and marvel at the way she could bring the whole school community together to create an organized and inviting literacy environment.

And then I would give the student teachers a task - to find at least a couple opportunities in the coming week to pitch in and clean up a common area, without overstepping the bounds of being a new member of the school community. At our meetings, we'd share what we'd done, and how we'd used the cleaning experience to build a bridge to a colleague at the school. Everyone found there was no better way to be accepted as a member of the team than to tackle the growing pile of dirty coffee cups in the staffroom sink, or to take on a schoolwide bulletin board in sore need of an update.

One of the tasks Shelley gave her staff was to come up with a list of housekeeping pet peeves, which she began with a list of her own (i.e., leaving dirty coffee cups around, using common areas as if they were meant for storage). My interns and I would ask the teachers on staff to work with us at a mentor meeting to create a similar list of their peeves, so that we would do our part to clear up hot spots with them.

What are your pet housekeeping peeves at your school? What clutter or hot spots have you come to accept as the norm in the building? Instead of just announcing things need to be neater, maybe there is a better way to harness that spring cleaning energy to get to the root of the problem - chucking what needs to be chucked, or putting up a couple more shelves for storage of books or coffee cups. The cleanliness of the environment has everything to do with successful literacy learning in it.

This week, we've got an encore of one of our favorite videos on cleaning up a storage area. Plus more as always. Enjoy!

Brenda Power

Editor, Choice Literacy

www.choiceliteracy.com

Free for All

From the Choice Literacy Archives, "The Sisters" (Gail Boushey and Joan Moser) help a new teacher declutter a storage area, using the "4 Piles" method to streamline the process. Included on the page is a link to the Hot Spots workshop activity for study groups and staff meetings:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/168.cfm

The Persian term Khooneh Takouni or "Shaking the House" refers to the spring ritual of not only cleaning, but a series of new beginnings during this season. The Inclusive Classrooms organization has tips for a celebration of Khooneh Takouni with students, and includes ideas for everything from cleaning out lockers to rewriting the class community rules:

http://www.inclusiveschools.org/tips.cfm

Join us this summer in Oregon, Ohio, or Maine for this summer's Choice Literacy Workshops. Featured presenters include Aimee Buckner, Karen Szymusiak, "The Sisters," Franki Sibberson, Jennifer Allen, Ruth Shagoury, and Andie Cunningham. All participants receive DVDs to use in study groups or staff meetings back home:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/department22.cfm

For Members Only

If you're looking for an alternative or supplement to Daily Oral Language in the intermediate and middle grades, Sentence Observations are a wonderful tool for helping students learn about grammar and craft. Karen Terlecky explains how she uses sentence observations with her 5th grade students in this feature - we've included a video of a typical sentence observation to show how they work:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/561.cfm

We know Choice Literacy members love room tours, so we've been gathering some new ones this winter. If you've enjoyed Katie DiCesare's writing on word study this year, you'll like her video tour of her 1st grade classroom highlighting the many uses of anchor charts and wall displays to promote literacy:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/585.cfm

Reward yourself and your students with some cozy new seating options in your classroom after you've finished your spring cleaning. The Sisters (Joan Moser and Gail Boushey) have suggestions for different seating options for young students in this photo essay. We're trying out a new player for these essays - we hope you like it:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/577.cfm

Ruth Shagoury and Melanie Quinn asked their colleagues to share the "most beautiful thing" about the puzzling student each of them is looking at closely in their study group. This is a great activity you're looking for a quick and easy icebreaker to spark some positive energy in your next study group or staff meeting, and remind everyone of the joys of our profession:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/584.cfm

From the Mailbag: A few members have written in recently asking about transferring their membership to a home email address. As we approach the summer months, it's a good time to remind all members that you can access Choice Literacy from any computer at home, school, or on the road, so there is no need to transfer your account. All you need is your username and password to log in from anywhere. If you struggle to view videos on a slow connection at home or school, you may want to access your account from a computer with a zippier connection.

That's all for this week!