The One With Amy-Clones

Many people have said that teachers have a major influence on America's youth.

And if you know me...that could be a scary thing.

I like to think that at least 97% of the influence I have on my students is positive, but this week i got a glimpse of the other 3%.

If you know me AT ALL, you probably are aware that I have some - well - obsessive/compulsive tendencies. Perhaps they are even more than just tendencies. I guess I just really like things to be in their place. I like pictures to be straight. I like furniture to be at right angles. I like the little chairs in my classroom to be evenly spaced. I even prefer that my clutter be - at the very least - in a nice, straight pile. And I like things to be just so.

This is not normally an issue. When the students are there, I can live with the fact that chairs get moved and aren't always straight. I can handle that the pile of paperwork is messy for a day until I get a chance to straighten it out. I don't mind that the sofa gets moved a little during the day and is no longer perpendicular to the wall. (It just means that I'll straighten that out too when the school day is over).

But this week, when I noticed my class organizing the stacks of chairs by color, I started to get concerned. And then when another student noticed that a different set of lights was on than usual and told me it was "all wrong," I got a little more concerned. And it was a little disconcerting to have a student straightening out all the cards in our game after every turn. But what really put it over the edge was when one of my students spent an extra couple of minutes during clean-up time spacing out the chairs at the snack table.

Apparently, amidst the color games, counting activities, speech development and everything else I think I am teaching, I have found time to create tiny OCD clones of myself.

I kinda like it.