Ah! What better way to end the school year than having your classroom broken into?

Today is a pupil-free today, which we’re supposed to use to clean up our rooms and pack up our stuff. When my colleague and I got to our classroom this morning, we noticed that students had gone through her stuff. (My stuff is pretty much all packed up already.) Our adjoining teacher’s room was also similarly rummaged. Someone must have gotten into our rooms (which were locked) some time over the weekend.

It appears that nothing of value was taken, but there were three bags that were packed up with things that the hooligan(s) were presumably going to take but then left behind for some unknown reason. Here are some of the things that they were going to take:

• almost empty bottle of hand sanitizer
• stickers
• markers
• hot chocolate
• pencil sharpener (with the shavings dumped out on the table)
• sticky notes
• rulers
• tissue
• blow bubbles
• plastic forks and knives
• staplers and staples

Clearly, these were not professionals as they weren’t interested in things of value like computer equipment or calculators. The miscreants also put a bunch of staples into the wall. And… the best part!! They did some math on the white board.

So since I’m a teacher…

Thievery Assessment Rubric:

• Cleanliness: 2/4
  Comments: Pencil shavings were left on the table, but there was some interest in hygiene (vis-a-vis the hand sanitizer).
• Mathematical content knowledge: 2/4
  Comments: Good work on correctly finding the lowest common multiple of 3 and 5 (even though 9 was not listed as a multiple of 3). Also, good job changing 1/3 into 5/15. But how can 1/3 and 2/5 both turn into 5/15? That shows poor mathematical reasoning.
• Thieving: 0/4
  Comments: If you’re going to go to the trouble of breaking in, at least take something of value.

Total score: 4/12

Final grade: F