“I wish I could use clear packing tape to secure my alphabet chart to the wall,” said the first-year teacher. She was having her weekly meeting with her mentor teacher, who had been teaching for thirty years.
“Packing tape you cannot use,” replied the mentor. “For when you take the chart down in June, it will rip paint from the walls, undoing the custodian’s careful painting job. You must use painter’s tape that the principal hands out.”
“But painter’s tape doesn’t hold things up very well,” the first-year teacher protested.
“We must do the best we can with the painter’s tape that is given to us,” said the mentor teacher.
The first-year teacher was in her classroom after school, making labels for her writing center. She had made simple drawings of pencils, crayons, and glue sticks and was about to secure those drawings to the shelf.
Then her mentor teacher walked into the classroom.
“Those are some fine labels,” said the mentor. “Now you must take the next step.”
The mentor heaved her five-pound, twenty-year-old laminator on the first-year teacher’s desk.
“Laminate your labels. Then attach those labels to shelves with clear contact paper, which lifts easily,” the mentor teacher said. “That way, you can use the labels year after year.”
“I—I don’t know if I have time to laminate,” said the first-year teacher.
“She who laminates now saves time later,” the mentor teacher insisted.
The first-year teacher and her mentor teacher were having their weekly meeting.
The mentor teacher leaned back in one of her classroom’s small plastic chairs and clasped her hands.
“Last time we met, you were trying to attach the bathroom turn-taking chart to the wall,” she said. “How did that go?”
“I put the chart up with painter’s tape, but it keeps coming down,” the first-year teacher said, shaking her head. “Maybe that’s because I made it with cardboard—painter’s tape isn’t strong enough. I feel so lost.”
“Walk with me,” said the mentor teacher.
As they strolled the early childhood wing, the mentor teacher said, “Painter’s tape is an important adhesive material, but as you’ve learned, sometimes you need something more.”
Gazing at a rainbow painted on the cement wall, the mentor teacher continued, “Pretty soon, like other teachers here, you’ll have a command of this work, of sticking so many things to the walls, the shelves, the tables. You’ll have a command of it all.” She looked at the first-year teacher knowingly. “A command…”
“Wait—what you said—it reminds me of something,” the first-year teacher said. “Command … Command strips! They’re strong and won’t damage the walls! I can use those to hang the bathroom turn-taking chart!”
The mentor teacher smiled. “It is wisdom to recognize when several Command strips are needed on the back of a cardboard chart, to hold it in place until June,” she said. “Use more Command strips than you think you need—for that is the right amount.”
The first year-teacher was in her classroom before school, adhering small number lines to students’ desks.
When the mentor teacher peeked her head in the door, she saw that the first-year teacher had laminated the number lines. A roll of contact paper was on a nearby table.
The mentor teacher shook her head and chuckled. “All we have to do is decide that it is time to laminate before sticking instructional materials to the table,” she said to herself. “That is all.”
During a break at the faculty meeting, the mentor teacher slid a small roll of blue electrician’s tape across the table to her mentee.
“Just in case you need to put line-up spots on the floor,” she whispered. “If you use this tape, you can remove it easily in June, and it leaves barely a trace. She who uses electrician’s tape on the classroom floor is the one who remains in the custodians’ good graces, and that is what one needs if one wishes to have a good relationship with them, in case one’s sink ever gets clogged because one was washing too much sand from the sensory table down the drain.”
The first-year teacher knocked on the mentor teacher’s classroom door in June.
“I need your help,” she said, grimacing. “I used the recommended adhesive materials on the tables, floor, shelves, bins, and walls, and now that school’s over, I’ve lifted all of that up so the custodians can clean. But there’s a sticky residue everywhere.”
The mentor teacher tossed the first-year teacher a spray bottle of an orange elixir that smelled like citronella. “Now there is only one tool you need: Goo Gone,” she said. “It is the best defense you have. Use it, and use it well.”