DESK TIDINESS

One of the things that happens all too quickly and easily in classrooms is for student desks or working tables to become untidy. This bad habit applies to students of all ages. It impacts tidy trays and disk storage areas.

One of the things that quickly adds to untidiness are sheets of paper students have completed but which haven’t been filed, glued into scrapbooks or arranged for permanent keeping. They quickly become ratty, crumpled, dog-eared and therefore not worth keeping although they are a record of work.

It is important to encourage children to take pride in their work. One of those pride elements is the way in which work is stored in desks and storage units.

Another thing that often happens is that pencil shavings get left either on the top of the desks, in desk storage areas or on the floor. It’s important to encourage children to sharpen their pencils at the waste bin. The best pencil sharpeners are those that contain the shavings so that they can be periodically emptied into the bin.

Desks and tidy trays can become cruddy, quickly. I believe it is important for teachers to have students go through and tidy their desks at least once a week. It is a habit worth establishing.

When choosing a time to clean desks or desk areas make sure that a time limit is set. It shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes for desks to be given a regulation cleanup and for tidy trays to be fixed. The ideal thing happens when students automatically and by habit keep their desks clean neat and tidy and. To encourage this when students finish work and have five minutes spare, to ask if their desk need attention can be a way of helping to establish that habit.

I’ve heard it said that “cleanliness is next to Godliness”. There is no better way of starting young people who grow to become tomorrows adults into acquiring the tidiness habit than reinforcing it through school. And there is no better place to start than with desk tidiness.