All week long I have been carrying 23 years worth of high school teaching paraphernalia to the trash, to my car, to my house and to the thrift store. I have carried books and papers, student notes and George Foreman grills, paper plates, cough drops and Post-Its.

Every nook in my large classroom had something that needed to be cleaned up or put away, and there were memories attached to every item — even the soft Kleenex I brought in for students so they didn’t have to blow their noses on school-supplied “sandpaper” tissues.

Tim O’Brien’s modern classic on the Vietnam War, “The Things They Carried,” has the dubious distinction of being the most frequently stolen book in my room; students will borrow a copy and never bring it back. The book is a moving, and highly symbolic, account of the burdens of war. Students identify with the things soldiers carry because they each have their own set of burdens.

The things soldiers carry are heavier, in all respects, than the things teachers carry — but no less symbolic to who we are. Unlike soldiers, we don’t often run the danger of losing our lives, but our identities are taken over by our occupation just as soldiers’ identities are by what they do.

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Deciding what to take and what to leave is no easy task, for a teacher or for anyone else. We take with us what we can’t bear to leave. For me that included the most recent student evaluations of the meaning of my course, as well as this year’s pile of thank you notes.

I took the books I knew I would consult or reread in the future, and gave away the rest. I threw out all quizzes and tests, but kept some college essays — because they were more personal.

I tossed out my daughter’s gag gift of a ceramic jar labeled “Ashes of Problem Students,” but kept Niveen’s gift of a clear glass globe. I left my bust-of-Shakespeare paperweight but carried home the “Book Woman” tapestry that has hung behind my desk for 16 years.   

Some of these treasures will find a home in my George Mason University office but — let’s face it — an office where I will spend several hours a week will never take on the dimensions of a classroom where I spent several hours a day.

Did the process of moving make me sad? Not really. I was sad to leave the students, but that was a few weeks ago — before I left to grade Advanced Placement tests and before they left for graduation. Those students I’d grown attached to were leaving anyway, so I shouldn’t have been sad to see them go. But they were my last high school group, my last Advanced Placement seniors.

Next year when I go off to grade those AP tests, it will, for the first time, be an exercise about someone else’s students — not my own. So I am a bit sad that my personal investment in AP is over.

But the connections I’ve made, with students and subjects, won’t end. I will continue teaching, continue reading, continue writing. That is what I will continue to carry, wherever I am.