One of my rituals at the start of each school year is to clean student desks and chairs. Year after year, before students arrive for their first day of school, I scrub and shine these desks. My hands, raw from cleaner, fail to remove remnants of short-lived romances tattooed into the laminate. Profanity from past students lives on in the rubber sidings of these desks. These are the same desks I used when I was a student. As I clean, I imagine what my classroom would look like – what it might become – with an interior makeover. It is not often that we see an overhaul of the furniture in our public school classrooms, let alone in the middle of the school year. But this year, it actually happened!
