All teachers have those little things that drive you INSANE during the course of the school year. Initially for me it was the constant need to get up and use the pencil sharpener...ugh! (or worse yet...not having a pencil...nothing slows down notebooking more). I made my peace with that years ago by having a pencil loaner bin filled with the cheap plastic pencil sharpeners (that catch shavings). I buy those at Staples during their penny sale and as a teacher you can get more then the "four per customer" rule. I did not buy enough for this years class and made a mental note to get more. Make sure you put your name on it with permanent marker THEN put a piece of clear tape over it. That has kept them from disappearing and is an easy way to tell the difference between yours and a student.
Of course my next little pet peeve is that students will not take a pencil if it doesn't have an eraser so that leads to a 5 minute search through the pencil loaner bin for one that does. Sigh... To deal with that I bought a bunch of the pink erasers, cut them in thirds, and put my initial "H" on it (all over it). Sure some of them got lost, misplaced, taken but I put them on my Christmas "wish list" and I got a bunch for gifts this year.
So now that I have made my peace (sort of) with pencils and erasers I jumped to obsessing about no names on papers. I'm sure that there are many teachers out there who know what I mean. You start grading a stack full of papers and sure enough there are 3 or 4 students who have not put there name on something. Well when you are notebooking there are times where you can't pre-glue something in because students need to have the ability to open something wide to work on (foldables or booklets). To combat that I do several things...first I say, "Don't start anything, everyone turn your booklet/foldable over and put your first name...give me a thumbs up when that is done." Of course you have the handful of students not listening and they give you the "thumbs up" sign just because everyone else is doing it. Another thing I try is to appoint one person at the table to check that everyone has their name on the assignment and only that person gives me a thumbs up. Ultimately (and this is the one that I use the most) I circulate around the room and do a name check at each table as students are working independently. I am always surprised when I do these "name checks" how many student STILL don't have their name on their work.
My current pet peeve has NOTHING to do with notebooking and it is completely new to this year...it is the shuffling of feet while walking down the hall. We have fine sand/dirt that gets tracked in since I am on a "main hall" where most of the foot traffic passes....in order to get to the library, recess, gym, computers, etc. Students are not picking up their feet but are sliding their feet and when you get the sand underneath it makes a horrible sound. My current line I say to students is, "Pick up your feet you are not 100 years old." This works momentarily but I still have the dedicated shufflers who either just love the sand sound...or just want to annoy me :)
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