Dr. P.'s Top 3 Tips for What to Save and What to Chuck in June

When I think back to late June in my own large public high school (way before I was an online tutor!). I picture the contents of lockers ejected gleefully across linoleum floors.  Textbooks, brown-paper bags that used to cover textbooks, Doritos bags, and papers – reams’ worth of individual, crumbled up papers – lying still in lifeless hallways like 8x11 snow-colored confetti in Times Square at 7am on New Year’s Day.

Image by Steve Taylor on Unsplash

 This year, much less paper will occupy kids’ end-of-school year rituals.  (That trend is GREAT for the environment and, of course, was a necessary by-product of the COVID-19 pandemic.  It’s less good, however, for learning effectively, as I explained here.)  Nevertheless, whether your child is purging digitally or physically, here are my top three tips as an online tutor for what, how, and why to save school materials for the future.

1.    Save notes, homework, tests, and written work like essays that are part of multi-year courses.

 As a former teacher of Global History and Geography here in New York State, for example, I know that the tenth-grade Regents exam used to assess content covered in both ninth and tenth grades.  (Thank goodness, it now only tests tenth-grade material!)  However, freshmen would routinely toss their Social Studies notebooks when ninth grade ended.  They regretted this myopic decision the following year! Check with your child’s current teacher or guidance counselor to make sure that the current year’s material won’t be assessed next year before bringing in the recycling bin.

2.    Make sure your child also saves work from “foundational courses” in subjects like math and languages other than English. 

In these courses, concepts and content learned later in high school often build upon work covered in eighth, ninth, and tenth grades.  Just yesterday, I was working as an online tutor for a junior for her AP Spanish exam when she reached for her sophomore-year Spanish notebook.  Even if your child’s not planning on taking any more classes in these subjects, early work might be helpful when they review for the SAT and ACT.  (In fact, when I tutor online more advanced students taking pre-calculus and Calculus, they often rely on material covered during eighth through tenth grades.  Having notes taken in their own hands might prevent them from needing to be re-taught basic algebra and geometry.

Photo by Daniel McCullough on Unsplash

3.    Store one or two meaningful assignments per subject per year as potential supplemental essay fodder.  

While your child is applying to colleges as a senior, they might be asked to reflect back upon what they learned in high school in a supplemental essay.  Being able to go back and read that essay or see that project again may help spark their memory, facilitating the writing process.  Don’t forget to save the teacher’s comments, too!  (As an online tutor, I’m able to jar their memory, but not all students with with college application coaches.) Before storing physical projects in a box, have your child write a quick “label” that includes what the assignment required, which class and teacher it was for, what they learned and why they enjoyed it.  

Spring cleaning is never fun – especially after a spring (and winter and fall!) like the one we had this past school year.  Before letting your child joyfully tear up, incinerate, or recycle this year’s schoolwork, take 15 minutes to save the important stuff now to make future life a little easier.