Last night Mercury Man and I went to a student-led conference meeting at Sbop’s school. Each student led their parents into the classroom and explained what they did in class and how the grading period went. Sbop did very well, he told us about his various individual and group projects and what he liked and didn’t like about the grading period, and also areas he had improved on and areas he felt he could improve for next year. His main teacher is very enthusiastic, warm, and friendly and she has done a wonderful job this year.

We left with a big packet of his papers which included various tests, homework assignments, and artwork. I put it in our big School Papers drawer. I used to have a very difficult time throwing away any of their papers, but I had to develop a policy about handling all their various school work or else I’d have stacks and stacks of their stuff everywhere. The teachers keep or throw away very little; they send everything home. Every test, every quiz, every homework assignment, every piece of artwork, every scratch sheet even.

My policy for tests/homework assignments is to keep 5-10 items from each grade that is relevant for that grade/age group. My policy for artwork is to keep any artwork they made expressly for me as well as 2-5 pictures that I find truly aesthetically pleasing and/or they expressly want to keep. My policy for big projects is to keep the entire project as big projects are rare, usually one a grade. This helps me to discard school work of theirs with less guilt. It makes me be brutally honest about what I really want to keep of their schoolwork for memories. And it makes me treasure even more the stuff that I did keep.

Ibop is eighteen now and a senior in high school, and I was recently going through the school work of hers that I’d kept. It spanned 13 years including kindergarten and made me feel very nostalgic. I loved looking through it all and feel I made wise choices about what to keep. When I started purging her school work files some years ago I remember feeling very sad about discarding some of it, but truthfully I don’t even remember the stuff I threw away, and neither does she. She did remember the projects and assignments that she got excited about and learned a lot from.

I once had a conversation online with a woman whose son had a severe head injury at the age of 6 that left him with a mental disability. She told me she wished she had saved all his prior school work because he was no longer the same child and would never be able to do artwork or school work that children without his level of brain damge do. Her son would never be the same again. Her point was to tell me I should save everything of my kids’ school work, but it made me realize something else entirely…Although my kids have not changed because of any brain damage, they have changed a great deal from age to age. My kids will never, for example, be 4 years old again. Or 6. or whatever age younger than they are now. And they are each very different from the 4 year old they once were. So I treasure mementos including school work from each age/grade, I really do. However I don’t need to keep each and every piece of school work to appreciate or remember that age or grade.

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