How to Clean Your Classroom for Summer

I have been a classroom teacher since 1996, so I should know how to prepare a classroom for Summer vacation or Summer school by now. Some of these tips might seem obvious, but they might not all occur to you.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Cover your garden. If you have a garden and you leave it uncovered you may return to a garden full of weeds or unwanted vegetation. I cover my garden with a tarp so that everything will die over the summer and we can start from scratch in the fall.
2. Lock up your valuables. In fact, don't lock them up; take them home with you. Do not leave small, expensive electronic equipment such as cameras and laptops in the classroom, even if you have a locked cabinet. If there is a break-in, you better believe that the locked cabinet is the first thing the thieves are going to go for.
3. Store your food from ANTS! Leaving any food in the classroom in the summer is not a good idea. If you must leave some food in the classroom make sure it is sealed in Ziploc bags or something that the smell cannot escape from.
4. Don't turn in your keys. Many schools ask that you turn in your keys for the summer. If you can at all avoid turning in your keys you will be glad you did because it is so easy to leave something that you are going to need over the summer in your classroom.
5. Put away your keyboards or cover up your computers. Returning from summer to dusty keyboards and monitors is no fun.
6. Back up all your computer files. When you leave for the summer pretend you are never going to see your computers again. Backing up your computer files is a lesson most people have to learn the hard way (by losing everything!).
7. If your classroom is being used by another teacher for Summer school, take pictures of absolutely everything in the classroom and leave copies with the teacher so that he or she knows how the classroom looked when they got there and how it should look when they leave. Keep the originals.