Ahhh, there’s nothing better than the sight of a clean desk. Books stacked meticulously from biggest to smallest, not a loose paper in sight, and a single freshly sharpened pencil perfectly set in the pencil groove. These are the desks we dream about… and then laugh in our own faces at the thought of our students ever having this elusive “clean desk”.
When I had a classroom full of the most adorable, big-hearted… messy as heck little first graders, clean desks were almost never a reality. For example, one dear little boy came up to me when we were cleaning our desks out, with the most excited grin on his face holding something behind his back. He proudly said, “Look what I found in my desk!” and triumphantly held up a wrinkly old breakfast sausage that had to be at least two months old, brandishing it in the air for all to see. Oh the treasures we find in the back of our desks!
That VERY same day, I had a kiddo come up to me and say, “Sally’s desk stinks!” Knowing that just minutes earlier a student had pulled a freaking sausage out of his desk, I should have taken this seriously. But no, I am an oblivious teacher trying to make the world a better place one social skills lesson at a time! I kindly corrected her with a teacher look and a “That’s not a very nice thing to say” schpeel. But she insisted, saying, “No, it smells disgusting, I’m gonna barf!”
I walked over to Sally’s desk saying, “Surely its not that b- WHAT IS THAT SMELL?!?!” I’d like to say that I actually said something a little more tactful but… that smell was pretty awful, and those may have been the actual words out of my mouth.
[SIDE NOTE: Our school had a WONDERFUL health and nutrition grant that provided us with a fruit or a vegetable snack three times a week. They came in little plastic cups and the kids actually ate things like tomatoes and celery because, hey, it’s food during class and, hey, it comes in a cute little cup!]
We dump out Sally’s desk to find cups and cups of uneaten fruits and vegetables shoved into the back. And of course, the first grade gods couldn’t let them be upright or have the lids on… they were all upside down on top of her Treasures Student Edition reader book. Growing mold. Onto the book. Yes, the book had mold incorporated into it’s pages. I am embarrassed to admit that’s how often we used our student readers. You really can’t deny the evidence of mold growing on the book! 😅
I tried to salvage the book, I really did. But there’s only so much you can do with paper towels and chemical-free “safe” cleaners (because heaven forbid we keep any Clorox wipes in our classrooms–our students might decide to clean their teeth or something with them). So we had a ceremonial burial for the book and laid it to rest in the trashcan. And I decided I should probably get a grip on our desk sanitation situation before one of my students died of sausage food poisoning or black mold.
So… WHAT DID I DO?
I would love to tell you that I just snapped my fingers and my students magically started taking better care of their desks. But I am not a magical fairy… OR AM I?! *snap* So maybe it involved a touch of brightly colored paper and a pinch of bribery incentive, but that was it!
Let me introduce you to your alter ego…
THE CLEAN DESK FAIRY!
Put on your tutu’s and get ready to sprinkle some magic dust, because this technique works!
I made this cute “Clean Desk Fairy” note (which you can find here!) and printed out a bunch of copies on fun colored paper. Then I put a few treats (I’m talking like a little Dum Dum” sucker, or if you want to get fancy, throw in a starburst or two!) in a plastic bag and stapled the note over it. Two of the 3 versions of the notes do not say “treat”, so you can do a food-free version with a pencil taped to the back. Once every week or two, after the kids had gone home, I would walk around the classroom and put 1-3 clean desk fairy treats inside the desks of students with impeccably clean desks.
Now the key is to ONLY put the treats in desks that are perfectly clean. You know you usually have at least that one OCD, overachieving student that just naturally loves clean desks (if you don’t, I feel for you. Just choose the cleanest desk and maybe do a tiny bit of tidying up the desk and hope the students don’t notice!). If you start lowering your standard so that everyone gets a treat, the students won’t be as motivated and work as hard to keep it clean. I’m a firm believer that the harder you work, the sweeter the reward. However, I did try to keep a mental record of who’s gotten treats and try to spread it out.
When the students come back the next day, they are SO excited to find a note from the clean desk fairy. I always act so surprised, and have an alibi prepared for when they accuse me of being the fairy (Who me? That’s impossible. I had an underwater basket weaving lesson RIGHT after school and ran there as soon as you guys left!). I also make a big deal about, “I wonder why the clean desk fairy left this person a treat?? Let’s look at their desk and try to see what impressed the clean desk fairy so much!” I let the students point out what they like about that student’s desk and what makes it look so clean. Then, we go right on to our schedule.
I used to have these grand cleaning sessions where all the students literally dump out their entire desks and overhaul all the junk. But really, ain’t nobody got time for that! And lemme tell you, after the clean desk fairy comes, the students MAKE time to clean their desk! They shift around their “carve a face into the crayon with my scissors” time and postpone ther “glue tiny scraps of paper I collected from the trashcan to my name tag” appointment and they clean their desks… because they WANT to! That’s the best part! I don’t have to do a thing (except be a magical fairy that spreads joy, and seriously, who doesn’t want to do that?!).
🌟💕
If you, too, want to have the magical power of the clean desk fairy in your classroom, and not have the nastiness of sausage and mold in your students’ desks, all you have to do is try out these AWESOME Clean Desk Fairy notes and let the bribery incentives and student self-accountability work their magic!
