By Amy Keyes 
I’d like to say I’m a super organized, type-A, Pinterest-savvy rock star when it comes to keeping track of the years as they fly by. You know, the one whose scrapbook looks like it belongs in a catalog. One who pulled all the pictures off their phone and turned them into an annual masterpiece to line the bookshelf. But that would be a total lie if I said I was.
I’m the one who has been staring down a half-filled cardboard box of my kids’ work from the past few years. And if I’m being totally honest, it’s not even just one year’s worth of stuff. And if I’m being totally, totally honest, I’m not even sure if it’s all schoolwork anymore for just one of my kids. I’m fairly confident I’m missing a few pieces of mail and important documents somewhere in the middle of the pile that spans from 8th to 10th grade. And it still doesn’t fill the box.
For so many years, I truly was on top of my organizational game, putting together end-of-the-year binders of my kids’ work from the year. Those early portfolios are filled to the brim with adorable art projects that peek out just a few inches too far from the edge. Stacks of paper with phonetically spelled words showcasing their favorite person in life. Tests scored with smiley faces and words of encouragement. Self-portraits, with matching character traits scribbled on the side, that make me smile every time I flip through the pages of those days gone by.
It seemed so easy to peer into their school days. They’d come home and carefully take the test they aced—or didn’t—out of their bag, and we’d talk through corrections. They’d read me their writing with pride. Show me their notebooks of ideas and doodles. Stack up the year in a way that was visible and tangible. And it motivated me to put it all together in a timely fashion, albeit somewhat creative, knowing that someday they would flip through it with nostalgia and pride.
But, somewhere along the way, my kids started using technology more than pencils and paper. Art projects became digital and hidden in the files of the devices they have been using for the past years of secondary school. PDFs, JPGs, and GIFs, have taken over—everything being submitted with a click of a button.
It is rare that I see anything at all throughout the year unless I use my incredible hacking skills to log into their laptops. Looking at their work has been replaced with checking Parent Portal for a grade and searching for feedback to help talk to them about what needs to be revised.
I consider myself lucky. I’m also a secondary teacher. So, I know how this digital world has changed the way kids work. I see the benefits and drawbacks of how reliant we have become on technology in this day and age.
It is not very often anymore that I hand back handwritten papers that showcase those unique writing styles or doodles and scribbles and smiley faces that lend themselves so beautifully to creating those end-of-the-year portfolios of the past.
In large part, this is the way that it is now. Feedback submitted with the assignment or in conversation right in class. Many kids opt to type and submit, rather than write and revise manually. I know that is true for my own kids, which is why the box in the corner of my living room is so sparse.
So I’ve found myself waiting. For the box to fill up. For the papers to unveil themselves in their full handwritten glory. For the colorful projects to explode like fireworks in all of their glory. And I’ve found myself waiting in vain.
School is done differently now. That’s a good thing. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be preparing anyone for the real world. What I need to do is think differently now about how I collect these artifacts. How I can see them as rare and treasured gemstones, remembering all the while that less is more in so many ways.
And while the binders might only be half full, the rest of it is stored somewhere in the Google cloud, which they know how to access. In the end, when they look through whatever it is that creates the visible journey of their school years, the pride and nostalgia will still be there.
by Krystal Sieben 
by Sarah Nichols 
