jumpingfish

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.

She posted her homework in the early afternoon. I opened it late in the day. 

Since we are remote, everyone posts to Google Classroom. A few print out the assignment and write on it. Most write on separate sheets of paper. They all submit photos of their work.

She writes on sheets of paper. Meticulously. Copying the questions in green. Writing her work in purple. And she always puts a box around her answers.

It’s a joy to grade work like this. Except…

Except today the pictures of her green and purple showed evidence of struggle. The pages were crumpled. They looked as if they’d been tossed in the garbage — every single one of the four pages.

“Ok, I’ll ask,” I wrote in a comment. “What on earth happened?”

“OMG LOL it’s my little devil sister,” she replied. You could almost hear her laughing. “She grabs my work and crunches it up and runs away with it. I have to chase her around the house to get it back.”

OMG LOL. Can’t you just picture it?

They sit at home in front of their computers in their rooms taking a quiz on Zoom.

Two students were working on an assignment. They hovered over the handout, holding yellow pencils and talking in hushed voices.

“See, you divide by a fraction right here,” one said.

“But that’s the hard way,” the other replied after a moment’s delay.

You see, fractions are a mystery to most of them. Their understanding of numbers consists of three categories: integers, decimals, and fractions, and they seem to think these are distinct concepts.

The sight of fractions causes many of them give up. And division by fractions is a flagrant abomination.

“That really is the hard way,” the second student repeated.

“Yes,” the first conceded, “but I like to do things the hard way.”

Correction: division by fractions is an abomination to most of them.

1. So Many Steps

“I did the assignment,” she said in an email.

She’s pretty good at keeping up with her grades. And when she sees something that she thinks is wrong, she lets me know. I depend on that. 

“Thanks for letting me know,” I replied. 

I checked Google Classroom, suspecting that I might have forgotten to copy her Google Classroom score into our grading system.

(The life of a teacher is peppered with such manual interventions to compensate for school district budgets that can’t afford to pay for “seamless integration”. After all, why pay for expensive automation when inexpensive teachers can do it by hand. And teachers are so accustomed to doing whatever’s necessary, that they just deal with it. And so we log into one system, open a PDF file, copy what we see, log out, log into another system, and paste in what saw. Log out. Dang, I’ve digressed…)

I brought up the assignment and clicked on her name. There was nothing there. 

“I don’t see your assignment.” 

“Well I remember doing it.” No doubt she did.

Here’s the thing of it (and this I thought only to myself)…

There is a difference between doing it and turning it in. And, there is a difference between clicking the turn-in button and confirming that is got turned in. (As in: don’t close the browser window until your credit card purchase has completed.)

“Make sure you turned it in,” I suggested.

A day later, her assignment appeared in Google Classroom.

2. Upon Reflection

Objectively, there are many steps to remember. Many things that can go wrong. Some students get it and some don’t. Many must throw up their hands and give up.

Get a laptop. Get a hotspot. Turn them on. Log in. Get them to talk to each other. Did you sync with the campus network first? Get the Google Classroom code. Were you on Zoom that day? Check your Google Classroom to-do list. Open the assignment. Read the PDF. Solve the problems on separate sheets of paper. Take pictures of all your work. Attach the pictures to the assignment. Click the turn-in button. Make sure the turn in succeeds.

Yep. Many steps.

I am reminded of an old video about a medieval monk help desk technician explaining the new “book” system that was replacing the old “scroll” system. A struggling monk throws up his hands in exasperation.

If you haven’t seen it, you really must. It captures the challenges that many of our families are facing. (It also captures perfectly the life of a help desk technician.)