Last week, I brought happy-hour Sonic drinks to my friend’s empty sixth-grade classroom. She’d decked it out as only excited teachers can, with pillowed reading corners complete with fairy lights, innovative seating, and wave bottles she’d made herself, with glitter inside.

We chatted, and I laughed about her curiously-labeled drawer of Bummer Pencils. A bummer pencil, she explained, is one she’s picked up off the floor or from a desk, maybe half-chewed or with no eraser. She saves those–I’m assuming she disinfects them?–for the time when a sixth-grader raises their hand with the news they have no pencil. read more