Some of the most poignant moments to be had when leaving a job you loved can surface in packing. The objects you’ve picked up over the years, like Proustian cookies, carry small memories with them, things that can be hard to toss in a box and take home for the last time.

For Steve Goodwin, library media specialist at Meadowdale Elementary, there was a lot to pack up earlier this week. Goodwin, who retires after 28 years as a teacher-librarian, spent days boxing up the career he described as “the coolest job in the world.”

He took a break Tuesday, June 26, to talk with the Enterprise, surrounded by his old things.

There was the bright woven blanket with little mirrors on it he used to transform himself or students into the magical “trickster” character in Native American stories.

There were the rocks from Goodwin’s days as a science teacher, and a jar of small colored plastic baubles mixed in with little treasures — mini-baseballs, bells — that children used to dig through.

“Every teacher has gobs of goofy things,” said Goodwin, digging into the jar.

There were also cards students wrote, and a poster they made to say goodbye, with photos and cutouts of sailboats. Goodwin likes to kayak.

“You’re the funniest man I ever saw!” one student wrote on the poster.

The collection of objects also speaks to the variegated nature of Goodwin’s job.

Over the years, he’s helped students find books they like. He’s taught lessons on research and resources, helped students find data, taught computer skills to teachers and co-taught with them. Among other tasks, Goodwin read stories to children, told them, sung them and acted them out with puppets.

“They love it,” he said. “Storytelling is very powerful. It resonates, especially with the younger kids. If it’s done well, it’s like a gift from the teller.”

Older students can be more cynical, Goodwin said. But he has ways of engaging them.

For example, he’d introduce sixth-graders to Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” by playing the rap song “Getcha Head in the Game,” which uses obscure basketball lingo. The kids use a basketball to do some of the plays, trying to infer the speaker’s meaning from the context.

Goodwin would then put up on the projector the poem “Jabberwocky,” which uses nonsense words to tell the story of a monster’s murder.

“I do spell check, and most words are underlined in red,” Goodwin said. “You start to look for bits and pieces of context — a verb, a noun.”

Kids then break into groups and act out different characters, using inference to figure out the characters’ actions.

Goodwin also used real-world props to help students understand a story. This year, he brought in his 17-foot folding kayak to the library and raised the sail to the ceiling to illustrate a story that used sailing terminology like “boom” and “bow.”

Of his coming retirement, Goodwin said he would miss the children’s energy.

“In this job, there’s no two minutes alike,” he said. “Kids are always bouncing ideas.”

At the same time, the job requires a lot of energy, he said.

“It’s very physically demanding,” he said. “There will be a time when I can’t put out the energy.”

Goodwin wants to keep teaching and working with teachers. This summer, he’ll teach some professional development courses and hopes to work with first-year teachers in the future in some capacity.

He also said he wouldn’t be surprised if he found himself back at Meadowdale as a volunteer.

But nothing’s been decided yet.

“It’s kind of like getting out of college,” he said. “My prospects are all good, but I don’t know what they are.”

There’s something exciting about that for Goodwin.

“It’s kind of a fun piece of adrenaline,” he said. “To try something different.”