I retired June 1, 2025, after 31 years in the classroom.

Beginning in August of 2024, I set aside time each day to clean out desk drawers, file cabinets, and bookshelves. It was a daunting task; and while most of my clean-out was focused on my seventh-grade classroom, I also cleaned out my dresser drawers and closets at home. After 15 years at the same school, I had collected so much spirit wear.

For several years, I was spirit wear coordinator (an actual title) for our school’s lacrosse team and also for our student council, which I sponsored. Over the years, I ordered (and proudly wore) shirts and sweats supporting the track team, art club, basketball teams, and football team, and any other team selling spirit wear as a fundraiser. A significant portion of my wardrobe consisted of blue and white t-shirts and sweatshirts with our school’s logo emblazoned across the front.

At school, I dumped ancient files and outdated instructional manuals in the recycling bins, relocated special books and mementos to their new homes in colleagues’ classrooms, and dispersed my emoji pillow collection amongst my students. At home, I carefully folded all my spirit wear and loaded it into two extra-large TJ Maxx shopping bags. I knew exactly where those bags were headed and what I hoped would become of their contents.

For years, retiring teachers in our district were offered the choice between a commemorative “hand call bell” (engraved with their name and years of service) or a silver apple (similarly engraved). A few years ago, the district took away teacher choice and gave every retiree a mantel clock (engraved only with the name of the district). Each school within the district provided a silver platter which boasted the teacher’s initials in a fancy font.

I’m not a silver platter kind of gal, and I don’t have room on my mantel for the clock with the district’s name on its base. Still, I wanted some tangible item to recognize all the years I faithfully arrived early and stayed late, and taught kids, and read with them, and wrote with them, and laughed, and cried, and drank cold coffee, and celebrated jeans’ days, and prayed for snow days, and attended faculty meetings, and decorated bulletin boards, and chaperoned dances, and ate my lunch in 19 minutes, and dreaded gym duty, and chatted with teacher friends, and lived the life of a teacher.

With that in mind, I humbly carried my two TJ Maxx bags into the building the Monday after fall break, 2024. I walked down the hall to a friend’s classroom and set the bags on one of her lab tables.

“If anyone asks what I’d like for retirement,” I said. “It’s a t-shirt quilt.” I showed her the folded shirts inside the bags and pointed out the shirts that were most special to me.

“If it’s too much to ask, I understand,” I said. “I can have it made later; but if it comes up, that’s what I’d really love to have.”

My friend smiled and took the bags. I knew my spirit wear was in good hands.

On May 29th, 2025, at our retiree recognition luncheon, I received a beautiful spirit wear quilt. In fact, I’m wrapped up in it right now, as I write this slice on a chilly March morning, almost a year after my retirement. Of course, I’d still have my memories of my years as a teacher even if I did not have this quilt; but this quilt boosts my spirit which is, after all, the purpose of spirit wear.