What's In Your Desk Drawer? Day 7

(This post is part of a series about the weird stuff teachers have in their desk drawers. You can read more about this project here, and I hope you'll share the stories of the weird stuff you have in your desk too!)

What...is...that...?

Is that a bag of plastic meat?

Yes. Yes, it is.

What's In Your Desk Drawer? Day 6

(This post is part of a series about the weird stuff teachers have in their desk drawers. You can read more about this project here, and I hope you'll share the stories of the weird stuff you have in your desk too!)

Can't be coughing on the children, can we?

Over the years, I've probably had half the medicine chest in my desk drawer. Today, I have cough drops in there. At different points I've had aspirin, Advil, Excedrin Migraine, antacids, Pepto-Bismol, DayQuil...you name it.

Why would I keep all these over-the-counter meds in my desk drawer?

Because even if I'm sick, I'd rather gut it out and just keep teaching.

What's In Your Desk Drawer? Day 5

(This post is part of a series about the weird stuff teachers have in their desk drawers. You can read more about this project here, and I hope you'll share the stories of the weird stuff you have in your desk too!)

"You've got $1000 in your desk drawer? On a teacher's salary?"

Yes, that's a $1000 bill.

What's In Your Desk Drawer? Day 4

(This post is part of a series about the weird stuff teachers have in their desk drawers. You can read more about this project here, and I hope you'll share the stories of the weird stuff you have in your desk too!)

Mmmm...minty-fresh!

I almost always have a container of mints in my desk drawer. (Almost always. Sometimes I'm out. And then I'm sad, and miss them.)

You see, like many educators, I have a caffeine addiction. My beverage of choice is coffee. I generally have two or three cups a day. If it's a particularly rough day, I might have four. Back in the beginning days of my teaching career, it was five or six, but I got a little twitchy then. (And those of you who know me well know that I'm already a little twitchy by nature...can you imagine me after five or six cups of coffee? Yikes.)

What's In Your Desk Drawer? Day 3

(This post is part of a series about the weird stuff teachers have in their desk drawers. You can read more about this project here, and I hope you'll share the stories of the weird stuff you have in your desk too!)

Glasses from LensCrafters, circa 1999.

I don't wear glasses. At least not regularly...not yet.

But I have a pair of glasses in or on my desk all the time.

This goes back to my first year of teaching, when I was serving as de facto Technology Coordinator at a relatively small Christian school. I taught 6th-8th math, and a high school computer class, and in all my "spare time" as a first year teacher, I kept the school's collection of (mostly donated) IBM 486 and Pentium computers running to the best of my ability.

What's in Your Desk Drawer? Day 2

(This post is part of a series about the weird stuff teachers have in their desk drawers. You can read more about this project here, and I hope you'll share the stories of the weird stuff you have in your desk too!)

Duncan Imperial. Emerald Green. Oh, yes...that's right.

In my desk drawer, I have an emerald green yo-yo. The condition of the string and the scuffs all over the outside edges will tell you that this yo-yo has been well-used. This yo-yo has been in my desk drawer since my very first day as a teacher, and I use it in class sometimes too (though not as often now that I'm teaching in higher ed.)

What's In Your Desk Drawer? Day 1

While working in my office over the weekend, I happened to be digging through one of my desk drawers looking for a particular doo-dad for a project I was working on. I was struck by the number of strange things I keep in my desk, and it got me thinking about what teachers keep in their desks and why.

Of course, there are the usual suspects: pencils, pens, erasers, scissors. There are probably a few oddities in our desks though--objects with stories of their own that have been placed in the drawer for a particular reason...or maybe for no reason at all, and now are just long-term residents.

My right-hand desk drawer...