“I wish I could use clear packing tape to secure my alphabet chart to the wall,” said the first-year teacher. She was having her weekly meeting with her mentor teacher, who had been teaching for thirty years.
“Packing tape you cannot use,” replied the mentor. “For when you take the chart down in June, it will rip paint from the walls, undoing the custodian’s careful painting job. You must use painter’s tape that the principal hands out.”
“But painter’s tape doesn’t hold things up very well,” the first-year teacher protested.
“We must do the best we can with the painter’s tape that is given to us,” said the mentor teacher.
The first-year teacher was in her classroom after school, making labels for her writing center. She had made simple drawings of pencils, crayons, and glue sticks and was about to secure those drawings to the shelf.
Then her mentor teacher walked into the classroom.
“Those are some fine labels,” said the mentor. “Now you must take the next step.”
The mentor heaved her five-pound, twenty-year-old laminator on the first-year teacher’s desk.
