Yesterday one of my young students came by the school with his dad while dad and I had some things to talk about. The classrooms were in disarray because the summer task of waxing the floors is underway. My student whispered to me, "Will the room be okay again when the kids come back to school?"

I assued him that all we were doing was making sure the floors would be pretty and shiny when school started again. He was so relieved.

I had forgotten how much the children tend to think of the classrooms as theirs. It was just "wrong" for all the tables and cabinets to be pushed to one side of the room. But it was also good for my young friend to see that we cared about the floors being shiny. He really liked that.