Spring Cleaning My Special Ed Classroom

Spring cleaning is a real thing, and if you have the urge to pitch and clean in your classroom, you are not alone. It is March and the weather is feeling pretty great, and we are looking at moving into a new school next year, so I'm taking a really hard look at what I have, coming up with what I need, and purging what I don't. Let me show you 3 ways that I am going through my items, determining what's important, and coming up with new organizations that's easy to move for the things that I do need. I am Jen and I am a K-12 self-contained autism teacher, and I honestly teach everything under the sun. I teach kids that are above grade level and kids that are working on foundational basic learning skills, and I'm going to tell you that when you teach that age range, you just— you get a lot of stuff in your classroom. Um, I am collectively known as a hoarder, and my classroom is filled with all kinds of things because I never know what my students might need. But I've got a couple of rules of thumb when it comes to whether or not I will keep items and if I should buy an item. I want to share those with you. If you find yourself in a buying habit because you go to the Dollar Tree or the Dollar Spot at Target or anywhere else that has adorable stuff all the time, I want you to ask yourself if you can come up with 3 different ways you're going to use an item. If you can, you can justify the purchase as long as it's reasonable and within your means. If you can't come up with 3 ways that you're going to use that on the spot, then it's not worth your time and don't purchase it. Also, stop and pause. Think, did I come to the store for this, or did I just see it and think it's really great? If the answer is you just saw it and thought it was really great, you could probably wait. And pause on purchasing that. Once a year, I try to go through my entire classroom, and that's a huge undertaking. When you have as many students and as wide of a variety of students as I do, you just accumulate a lot of stuff. And so I do something right away that really helps me. Let me show you. I get empty bins and a big giant trash can. So my goal here is that I have a bin that I can put anything that needs to be sorted in. I can make a bin for anything that I want to get rid of but I don't want to throw away, and I get a trash can for the things that I do want to throw away. So something that needs to be put away in one bin, another bin for giveaway, and a trash can— and a giant one at that— for things that I want to throw away. This is my current giveaway bin. I know that somebody out there could use these tablecloths. I thought I would use them, and I really don't. I actually used these to make wall decor a couple years ago and I bought a bunch of colors and I haven't used them since. So here's my rule of thumb: if I buy something or if I have something and I have not used it in 3 years, it goes to the trash or it goes to the giveaway pile. So I've held on to these. I know they don't take much up much space, but it's time for them to go. And sometimes it's just time to purge. I've got too many, um, sentence strip holders and pocket fold holders. This is just not necessary. I've got a million in my classroom that fit my needs. So these can go and I'm gonna put these in the giveaway pile in our break room. And it's just about thinning out what I have. If I've already got enough, then I don't need to hang on to these guys. Same for these sensory toys. I've got a bunch of stuff set aside for my OT. I've got a bunch of these in my classroom. I really don't need any more than what I have, so I've got some of these in here to give away as well. So one habit that I have in my classroom, and actually one of my assistants started this forever ago, is we have a lost and found box. If we find pieces or stuff stuff in our classroom and we don't know where it goes, we put it in the lost and found box. We have pieces like this, Velcroed and laminated pieces all over our classroom all of the time, and it's impossible to know where they always go, but what I do know is that if I find a piece, I can put it in my lost and found box. So one thing that we're going to do is we are going to go through all of our adapted books, we are going to mark if we are missing anything, go through our lost and found, see if we have a match. If not, I will print off any missing pieces. This tub is just a portion of my adaptive books. In fact, this tub is just Easy Matching Weekly Workbooks. I have everything from summer to fall. You name it, it is in here, and I love these so much. This one's the Fairy Tale and Superhero. And all of these are so great for errorless learning and easy matching. These are phenomenal for very beginning learners because they are, the tasks are just so engaging and so easy for them, but it takes up a lot of space. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go through this and organize this. I have bins in my classroom for each season. I have one for every month. So August, September, October, November, wherever fall, falls into, I'm going to put my fall books into that month. So fall happens in September, so I'm going to put all of my fall books in my September bin. Here are some of these bins. I've got November and February out because I'm going through those right now, but they're just buckets with lids that stack really nicely. They don't have to be giant. These are not huge, but they hold all of my decorations for that month, um, any special projects or books that I read. And then any adaptive books, any materials that are specific to that season or that month or a holiday within that month. So for example, February, I will put all of my Valentine's Day stuff in there. November will get Thanksgiving. All of that goes in there, and then I don't have to worry about it. I just grab that bin at the beginning of the month and I'm set to go. I go through these bins at least once a year. So at the end of the month, I go through everything as the school year goes, and then I categorize it. Have I used it in 3 years? If not, it goes in the trash or it goes in the giveaway. I go through things that are broken, throw that away, and then I just take a minute to organize it and make sure that I still need it. If not, it goes in that giveaway pile. By doing this every month, it makes my job at the end of the school year just a little bit easier. Now I'm starting this in March because cleaning the classroom is no joke, especially if you've got as much stuff as I do. And the idea of moving a classroom is a big one, especially when I look ahead and we are moving in the middle of the school year next year. So it's a whole new ballgame, um, and I'm going to be moving into a classroom that has a whole different layout. So I want to be really mindful of what I keep and what I toss. If you've got any organization tricks for your classroom, definitely leave them below. I love learning from you guys.