The Case of the Missing Supplies

Over the past few months, my aide has said things to me like: "Hm. I thought we had more markers", or, "Have you seen the red construction paper?" Today when she was looking for gold-yellow construction paper and it was all gone, I started to get worried. Before, I just assumed that things were messy and got lost, or moved, or maybe we were just losing our minds. But I could have sworn we had lots of gold-yellow construction paper left the last time I checked. My aide suggested that maybe somebody was taking things from our room. I dismissed the idea quickly, but the more I thought about it....

Two weeks ago, my colleague wanted to borrow a certain edition of the second grade reading curriculum. I directed her to where I keep that stuff, but it wasn't there! And even more telling, Monday morning I noticed that one of my two large classroom clocks was missing. One clock is a district clock, and the other was a personal clock that the teacher before me had bought--the one missing was the one belonging to the teacher before me. My colleague from across the hall, upon hearing of my little problem with disappearing items, was sure that the culprit was this other teacher who left right before I came. She must have kept the room key (she took a year off last year, and went back to teaching at a different school this year). So we went to the office to request a lock change.

The whole thing is quite bizarre. If she wanted her clock back, why not come and ask for it? Or call? As for the markers and construction paper--that stuff isn't hers, it stays with the classroom. Our supplies like construction paper come from district allotted budgets. Anyways, it could be that we're wrong, and it's not her... but she is the only good suspect so far.

And furthermore, how come I keep getting robbed? But I suppose missing markers is better than missing thousands of dollars :)