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.<\/p>\n
“How nice,” I remember thinking at the time. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“Pam,” I emailed our certification instructor during my second year. “I am loving those paperclips!” <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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<\/em><\/strong> many. Where are the paperclips going? One day during fifth period I found out.<\/p>\n Daniel came into the room.<\/p>\n “Daniel!”<\/p>\n “Mr. Hassssan.”<\/p>\n He walked past me. He walked to the table behind my desk. And he reached into the bin of multicolored jumbo paperclips.<\/p>\n “Daniel,” I said. “What are you doing?”<\/p>\n He was hooking them together in a chain.<\/p>\n “What do you mean, Mr. Hasan?” <\/p>\n “What are you doing with my precious paperclips?” <\/p>\n “Mr. Hassssan. You have plenty.” <\/p>\n As it happened, when he left class that day, he left his chain of multicolored jumbo paperclips behind, allowing me to rescue those few. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n It’s time to put those paperclips behind a locked door.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5868"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5870,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868\/revisions\/5870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}