How to start keeping teaching memories years into your career

You can start a teaching-memory collection in the middle of your career. Start with the next moment you want to keep. If something from years ago comes to mind first, that can be your first entry instead. Either way, the collection begins on the day you open it. It doesn't owe you an account of the years before.

The awkward part can be deciding what deserves to go first. Once you've taught for a while, a small thing that happened on Tuesday can feel like an odd choice when there are whole schools, subjects or stretches of your life missing. But a first entry has a fairly modest job. It just has to hold something you'd like to come across again.

Decide where your collection begins

Choose a starting point that gives you permission to finish today. “From today” works if the thought of sorting old things puts you off. Keep whatever next catches your attention. If nothing has yet, you can leave the first entry until it does.

“From this term” can suit a memory that's still close. Think of something you'd mention if a colleague asked how the term was going. Pick the part you still picture. You can leave September and October blank even if your first entry comes from November.

“One earlier chapter” makes sense if something specific has already come back to you. Perhaps you used to teach a different subject, or there was a room you knew well enough to find the light switch in the dark. Choose one detail from that chapter. You don't need the dates you worked there or the names of everyone who shared it.

Start with what you can still picture

Here's an invented example. While putting equipment away, a science teacher notices the chipped red paint on a horseshoe magnet. It brings back an early lesson, and the sound of paperclips dropping into a metal tray. The teacher can't place the year. What they can recall is the moment they stopped talking so the room could hear the clips fall.

The entry could be as short as this. The clatter of the paperclips. I remember putting the magnet down and doing it again, just for the sound. That little second go is the bit this teacher wants back. There's no need to find the original lesson plan or decide what the demonstration achieved.

Try the same with one detail already within reach. Write the bit you remember in words you'd actually use. If a date comes easily, add it. If you're unsure, “when I taught in the old lab” can be enough to find your way back. Our short teaching-journal guide has examples if you know the moment but can't find the words.

Leave the box where it is

Sometimes the thing that makes you want to start is a box you haven't opened in years. Opening it is one option. So is leaving it shut and writing down the memory that came to you when you spotted it. You can keep what that object means to you without photographing it, taking it home or turning out the rest of the cupboard.

If you already have an appropriate personal keepsake to hand, one line about why you've held on to it may be enough. For help choosing between objects, see what belongs in a teacher memory box. Leave school records and safeguarding information in the school's authorised systems. Follow your school's policy on phones and photographs, and leave out details that could identify a pupil. You can write down the non-identifying part later.

Let the next memory come from any year

Pick somewhere you'll recognise when you want to read that first entry again. An existing personal note can do the job. Chalkmarks gives you a private place to save a few words about a teaching moment and revisit them later. Use whichever place fits the kind of memory you're allowed to keep.

Suppose the next thing you want to save comes from yesterday, fifteen years after the magnet lesson. Put it next. If an earlier memory turns up while you're making tea a month from now, it can go after that. The order in which things come back to you is a perfectly workable order for a collection.

When you open the first entry again, notice which bit brings the moment back. If the sound of the clips does it, you can close the note there. The rest of that lesson can stay unaccounted for.