But for some teachers at Tonganoxie Elementary School, that’s the case.

Immediately after the May 11 tornado ripped the roof off parts of the grade school, rains soaked eight classrooms.

Linda Vernon lost more than 400 of her own books that were in her classroom.

Chances are, Merrilee Cooper, who teaches third grade in the school’s original wing built in 1955, will long remember her first visit to her classroom after the storm.

“It was strange,” she said, “You knew that a tornado had peeled the roof off over your head, but nothing in the room had been moved around. And everything was soaking wet.”

Last Thursday, April Brown, of Remodeling Contractors and Cleaning Services Inc., Kansas City, Mo., who helped teachers separate their supplies into salvageable and non-salvageable categories after the storm, worked in Cooper’s room.

“I think her room really took a lot of damage,” Brown said. “I think it’s the worst one and it’s the only classroom they had to tear the carpet out of.”

Besides damage to school-owned textbooks, covered under the school’s insurance policy, Cooper’s personal library of books and almost all of her teaching supplies, not covered by the school’s insurance policy, were drenched. Among the damaged were about 125 of her favorite children’s books, most of them hard bound and stored on a shelf next to the window.

It’s not so much the money she paid for the books that bothers her.

“I lost a lot of time,” Cooper said. “Time that it took to assemble the collection. And now time to replace the things trying to resurrect it all.”

Brown picked up a human-shaped piece of poster board.

“This is pretty dirty now,” she said.

Cooper looked it over.

“I guess it’s time to say goodbye,” Cooper said. “We used that to study the human body. But we can make another one next year.”

The women smiled at one another and after a moment, chuckled, and Brown added, “We spend a lot of time saying that we can make a new one.”

Among the books damaged in Cooper’s room were new books she received courtesy of the parent teacher association after the spring book sale.

“We hadn’t had a chance to read all of them yet,” she said.

And yearbooks.

All but one of her autographed yearbooks since 1986 were ruined.

Some of the rain-damaged books can be saved, Cooper said.

“As long as they don’t have mold growing over them and if I can pry them open, I’ll probably hang onto them,” she said.

Ruth Wickey, a first-grade teacher, said her students were worried about the loss of books.

One student, Alex Bartel, brought two books to give to Wickey to help replace those lost.

“There were some students who were really worried about the books,” she said. “And the Girl Scout troop that Alex is in is trying to raise money to help replace books for all of us.”

Throughout the school, from the rooftop where the roof was being repaired to the hallways where ceiling tiles were being replaced, evidence of the storm’s damage could be seen.

Even through the soggy mess of cleanup, Brown observed that the storm didn’t dampen spirits for long.

“I’ve worked with all eight teachers and they all said we needed a good spring cleaning anyway,” Brown said.

Or, as teacher Linda Vernon said, now she’s throwing out some materials that she didn’t use much anymore.

“It forces you to clean out all the cobwebs,” she said.