Stuff On My Desk or Reasons to Teach Middle School
- May 26
- 3 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
By Donna Vorreyer
A space-saver purple stapler with curved sides, balancing on its nose. For some reason,
I am the only person in the classroom that can work this stapler correctly. Maybe the students have been conditioned by years of leaning their weight against the lever of a traditional model, the table or desk underneath providing the opposing force needed to fold the metal firmly into place. New synapses take time to develop. I spend a lot of time unjamming the thing with a pair of scissors.
A weighted black tape dispenser. This may seem like a standard desk item. But this one is special because the little plastic piece that holds the roll of tape has been replaced seventeen times just this year. (Yes, I counted.) You see, when the roll is empty, most students don’t think that this unassuming item is not disposable. After all, so many things in their lives are. It is amusing to watch them try to balance a refill roll in the empty space and figure out how in the world to make it turn.
Gumby and Pokey figurines. My rubbery friends change places almost daily as students put them into new (and sometimes questionable) positions. One day they are riding a tray edge like cowboys, and the next they are perched on the edge of my tea mug like cliff divers. Some days they disappear from the desk altogether and pop up in other places: Gumby’s head in the vise grip of a clip magnet on the white board or both friends in some compromising position on the counter by the turn-in trays. They remind me of my own childhood, remind me that, no matter how grown up middle schoolers may seem, they are still children, too.
Two chrome Chinese Baoding exercise balls in a red brocade box. The accompanying brochure explains that learning to roll the two spherical chimes in one palm can help you build agility, balance body systems, and provide stress relief. Although I haven’t mastered them yet, they jingle soothingly as I try. They are a gift from a student who missed two weeks of school to visit her grandparents in Xian. She said she was going to buy me a journal, but she thought I needed these more.
Taped on the side of my desk that does not harbor the trash can is a large-font copy of E. E Cummings’ poem “old age.” I first put it there as a puzzle for them to ponder when they inevitably succumb to boredom and start searching the room for somewhere to lay their eyes. Its alternating lines and random acts of parentheses always start conversation. Thrilled that they want to talk about poems at all, I always have copies ready for the first time someone asks “What is that?” When we discuss it, they enjoy its rebellion and lack of standard punctuation, but it is the last line that always strikes them most: “and youth goes right on growing old.”
Magnetic Poetry Tiles. They are spread across the front of my metal desk. Every year I make a bet with my colleagues how long certain tiles will last before the arrangements become obscene. Come only lasts about a day. Other early retirees each year include mound, ball, member, and of course suck. Once the temptations to shock are removed, delights begin to emerge. After one particularly challenging day—several missing homework assignments, petty arguments, and general disdain for my lesson plans—I
see the tiles arranged like a sun, rays of random words emanating from an isolated sentence centered in a round empty space: We all shine.
Donna Vorreyer is the author of Unrivered (forthcoming, 2025), To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Her poetry, fiction, and essay work have appeared in Ploughshares, Cherry Tree, Poet Lore, Salamander, Harpur Palate, Booth, and elsewhere. She lives and creates in the Chicago area where she hosts the monthly online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey and is a co-founder/editor of the new journal Asterales: A Journal of Arts & Letters.
