Cleaning a Messy Classroom

Being an elementary teacher can be quite demanding. The job is so demanding that often keeping the classroom neat gets moved down the priority list. Even though you are extremely busy there are things you can do to keep your classroom neat and in order. Try these tips for maintaining a clean classroom.

1. Delegate responsibility to your students. Without a doubt this is the most important part to keeping your classroom clean. You can't do it by yourself. Especially when you have so much other work to do. Usually students are very willing to help you keep your room organized. I recommend having a list of jobs that your students are responsible for. Post this list in the classroom. At the beginning of each week assign these jobs to students and then change assignments every week. Examples of jobs you could use, a class custodian, a student to manage your learning stations, a runner(take things to the office), an eraser(takes care of cleaning the board at the end of the day), and a sweeper. The list of possibilities could go on forever.

2. Have students clean their desks weekly. Desk are always a part of the room that stay dirty. It is truly a challenge to keep them clean. No matter what group of students you have you will always have some students who keep their desk neat, and some students who just keep their desk messy. This is why I recommend having your students clean their desk weekly. This should involve taking out the books, throwing away or taking home excess papers and spraying off the tops of the desks with some type of cleaner. Doing this every week will help keep your room neat and clean.

3. Stay on top of filing papers. It seems like a teachers desk is always full of papers. Whether you are grading papers for students or filing papers for later there is always a constant flow of paper on your desk. Learn to create a good system for filing you papers. Don't allow stacks of papers to pile up as it will be much more difficult to organize later. If you can stay on top of this you will help keep your classroom clean.

4. Avoid food in the classroom. There are times when your students will eat in the classroom, for example parties or other special events. Try to limit the amount of food that is in your classroom. First of all it will get into students desks. Second, students will get crumbs on the floor and around the classroom. This will make your classroom much more dirty. Limit food to just parties or other special events like birthdays.

5. Teach students to have pride in their classroom. I think as a teacher you should teach students from the beginning of the year the importance of keeping the room clean. Stress to them the importance of picking up behind themselves and the importance of leaving the classroom neat at the end of the day. If you do this students will be less likely to leave a mess and as a result your classroom will stay cleaner.

It won't be easy but by using some of the mentioned ideas you can make your classroom one of the cleanest in your building!