Christmas time is upon us, and before your true love starts giving you geese, rings and a partridge in a pear tree, you have to say goodbye to your other true love: teaching. As you go to leave on the last day of term, you look around your classroom and realise that there are a few things you might want to sort out before you head into the holidays.

1. Water bottles
   It’s fair to say that 2016 isn’t short of things that will lodge it in our memory. For teachers, though, it will be the Year of the Bottle Flipping. And, as you open your cupboard and get buried under an avalanche of confiscated water receptacles, you can but hope that next year’s banned craze is less likely to take up all your storeroom’s free space. 
   
   
   
   
    
2. Cotton-covered glue sticks
   At the start of the year, you had such plans for ‘crafty’ lessons. But those plans came unstuck just about as quickly as your pupils’ fluff-covered Christmas cards. You no longer have glue sticks - instead you have tiny, useless plastic monoliths that will sit in a corner for the rest of the year, silently mocking your decision to buy in a bulk amount of cotton wool for the art table.
   
   
   
   
    
3. Two coats
   Your class are stood behind their desk. They are all wearing their coats. So why are there still a couple of coats stuffed by the radiator at the back of the classroom? Nobody knows. You silently do a panicked recount in case you’ve accidentally let two children wander off during the screening of The Muppet Christmas Carol. Nope. All there. Still, nobody claims the coats. Nobody ever claims the coats.
   
   
   
   
    
4. SO. MUCH. GLITTER.
   You have vaccuumed. Your caretaker has vacuumed. You brought in your fancy Dyson from home and vacuumed again. To no avail. Your classroom, your car, your house and pretty much all of your clothes are covered in the stuff. You have already consigned yourself to looking like a Twilight tribute act for the next few months. Resistance is futile.
   
   
   
   
    
5. A worrying amount of booze
   You wonder what rumours are doing the rounds about you, as you realise that your stash of presents from your class resembles the Christmas fete’s bottle tombola. But it’s time to put any paranoid thoughts to one side - term is over and you’re headed to the staffroom for the start of the staff festive do. And you’ve just realised how you can put those bottles to good use…
   
   
   

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