1. The Paperclips
It was a door prize of sorts. Four years ago, during a alternative certification night class, I won a door prize. My name was drawn out of a basket, and (presto!) I was the proud possessor of a bin of multicolored jumbo paperclips.
“How nice,” I remember thinking at the time.
But halfway through my first year of teaching, I began to grow attached to them. I had stacks of student work fastened together by period, and I hung onto them through the end of each semester. The paperclips kept the piles organized.
“Pam,” I emailed our certification instructor during my second year. “I am loving those paperclips!”
This year, I have begun using the colors to differentiate between assignments and periods and classes. Surviving as a teacher depends on your ability to shave seconds of time here and there, and being able to quickly reach for assignments from the correct period of the correct class has … shaved seconds of time here and there.
2. Missing Clips
I recently noticed that my supply of multicolored jumbo paperclips was decreasing. Sure, I was using them to hold together graded homework and tests, but not that many. Where are the paperclips going? One day during fifth period I found out.
Daniel came into the room.
“Daniel!”
“Mr. Hassssan.”
He walked past me. He walked to the table behind my desk. And he reached into the bin of multicolored jumbo paperclips.
“Daniel,” I said. “What are you doing?”
He was hooking them together in a chain.
“What do you mean, Mr. Hasan?”
“What are you doing with my precious paperclips?”
“Mr. Hassssan. You have plenty.”
As it happened, when he left class that day, he left his chain of multicolored jumbo paperclips behind, allowing me to rescue those few.
Then, as I reached for my mouse, ready to shave a few moments off of some other task in the two minutes remaining before the next period, I noticed for the first time that there was a chain of multicolored jumbo paperclips hanging from a hook above the whiteboard. Who knows how long they had been there.
It’s time to put those paperclips behind a locked door.