Things They Didn't Tell us at Teacher's College

[velvetpage]

1) Photocopier repair is an essential facet of the job.

2) Double-siding photocopies is a waste of time and effort. For every perfect double-sided copy, you will throw out at least one sheet that got caught in the photocopier and waste one minute digging said sheet out of the innards of the machine. Net result is negative on both time and paper conservation.

3) When you think a manual hasn't been sent from the publisher, check with the teacher of the split-grade class. He may have only eight grade 5's, but the chances are good that he absconded with the teachers' manual that is supposed to work for both grade 5 classes.

4) Skip the lessons which require materials that are only available in the teacher's manual you haven't got. Making up your own from scratch is NOT WORTH IT.

That's my rant for the morning. THe bell just rang.

Comments

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

It helps also to use the proper cardboard sheets when using the laminator....
If double sided copying on an old photocopier (do one side then feed the half done stuff through the aux paper tray)
Let the paper cool down before the second run and fan/fan/fan/fan your "blank" sheets before starting. Else it all sticks!

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The thing is, these are fairly new machines (at least, about the same age as the kindergarteners.) They are digital, and have good memory for long jobs. The problem is that they get bunged up an average (yes, we've been keeping stats!) of four times for every class set of double-sided sheets. If you assume five destroyed sheets each time, we are better off by a total of five sheets when we duplex. Also, taking the machine apart every time it gets bunged up is a major pain in the butt. I no longer bother unless it's REALLY important that something be double-sided. My time is worth more than that.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Then the reason why they bung up needs investigation.
My own guess would be sticky copies caused by too dense copying or an imperfect fuser.
Imperfectly fanned paper causes sticking but if it's been through once that should be OK

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

We have photocopy repair people in every two weeks, on average, because one of the two machines has entirely stopped functioning. This usually happens just when everyone needs to do two hundred photocopies in one day.

The real problem is that photocopiers in general are not designed to do hundreds of copies a day each for years on end. I mean, even if it only bungs up once every two hundred copies, that's still about once every two days per teacher. What would be acceptable accuracy in an office doing a hundred copies a day is enough to totally screw up my morning. Every morning. And the Board of Ed is, unsurprisingly, not willing to cough up the money for top-of-the-line machines when these ones are only four years old.

I've just learned exactly how to take jammed paper out of a photocopier. In any one of about seven locations. I also know how to change toner and ink, fix any duplexing issue you might have, and kick it when it doesn't respond to these tender ministrations.

This, in addition to being the teacher, overpaid babysitter, social worker, coach, librarian, and parenting counsellor for every kid that walks through my door. No wonder teachers feel overworked. . .

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Sympathy. Seriously, - sympathy.
Before working on vis. aids for the vis impaired, (gosh! '89 - '92) I used to run a workshop. Two of them at the end. One of their tasks was
Rebuilding/refurbing....
Photocopiers.
We used to test the bottom end model with about 500 straight through with no snags before passing it. Should then have been good for 500K.

Made me a bit of a photocopier nerd I'm afraid.
Depending on print runs we had a product then which was a copier/duplicator. It could....
take your original document and electronically scan it, cut it's own duplicator stencil, and WHAMMO! copies beyond the dreams of publishers, periodically renewing it's stencil when it got too grotty. Automatically I think, although it's a long time ago now.

We've come a long way from Banda spirit duplicators and the purple copies that smelt of methylated spirits that I knew when a boy....

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I remember those! They called them dittos, and they were all but illegible.

I firmly believe that one of the reasons most kids can't write legibly or put sentences together is the advent of photocopiers in schools. When I was in school, we would have to copy whole paragraphs off the board for science or social studies. My kids get a photocopy of the same material. It means less rote learning and (hopefully) more thinking, but we did lose something in the process; specifically, we lost our opportunity to teach handwritten language and model good sentence structure. We never show them how to do that anymore.

I'm back to a pet-peeve rant. It's time for math class. :)

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

More to the point is that photocopies don't always get read thoroughly. When you have to write it down, every darn word has travelled through your cognitive centres at least once...more if you actually check that you've copied it correctly.
I think it's no coincidence that the modules I didn't pass first time at university were the ones with photocopied study notes. (got them second time of course but then they don't contribute to honours....)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I agree. I make my kids copy stuff off the board on a regular basis. My second year in grade 7, when my kids were the worst little bunch of s***s I've ever encountered, I taught an entire history unit from overheads that they copied. It was horrible teaching practice, but the kids who cared enough to remember did better on it than when I taught more interactive lessons with fewer handwritten notes. Of course, most of the class rebelled by choosing to fail. THat's why I hate grade 7; they've learned that you can't make them learn, and they are prepared to fail if they think it will make you mad.

In any case, the move away from rote learning has not been entirely positive. The kids do not get as firm a grounding in basic skills as they used to. The trend now is towards more modelled writing, followed by independent work; I think it's a good compromise.