Huh

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

I was subbing for a tech ed teacher today. I assumed (never assume) that was a computer guy who taught computer-y stuff because that is what tech is. I opened the classroom and saw no computers.

Huh.

Apparently this is a “build stuff” class. The 8th graders were building bottle cars – the only requirements were no bigger than something and had to include a plastic bottle. The 7th graders were building triangular stands out of balsa wood, no bigger than 8″x4″. Each class had 4 class periods to do their construction and the testing (races or holding up weight) will happen on Monday. I was the third of four subs this week.

There were 39 8th graders up first. I really hoped they were interested in their projects. Just as class started, a lovely young women came in and said she hoped I didn’t mind, but she was going to sit in on the class today. Of course, I didn’t mind – another adult can only help (turns out she was an assistant principal. As people who randomly appear in your classroom go, that is so much winning) (I don’t think I came off too well, since every time I thought, “mmm, what is going on there,” or was on my way to talk to people about what they were doing she beat me to the punch, exhorting them to sit down or do better or whatever. Didn’t matter to me – things would have been INSANE without her, I’m sure). Six people worked on their projects. The rest were “done” or had not procured their own materials (a requirement) and had nothing to do. It is quite interesting that if you give middle schoolers schoolwork to do, they reallllllly want to play on their devices. If you give them nothing to do, they whine about having nothing to do.

Next came 7th graders and balsa wood and GLUE. There was a gallon jug of wood glue with a pump. The kids were supposed to use little paper cups to hold their glue and to use paint brushes or popsicles sticks to apply their glue. There was less than an inch left in the gallon. There was a big bottle of Elmer’s white glue on the shelf, but no other glue apparent. I do not like to waste materials (okay, let’s be honest – I DO NOT LIKE TO WASTE MATERIALS) and I wanted to make that glue last as long in the day as possible. There wasn’t enough left to make the pump work, so I had to pour it into the cups. One of the rules of the towers was that glue could only be adhered to the face of the sticks and nothing could coat the sticks. Nonetheless, the previously constructed walls of the towers almost all had 1-inch puddles of glue surrounding each joint. Ouch. The kids sat trying to cut or pull off the extra – rolling their eyes at me when I told them to be gentle so as not to break the joint. None of the kids who broke their structures apart mentioned I had been right.

By the end of four classes, we were on the last drops. Each group was frantic to get the wood glue and not to have to use the regular glue (fair). I was trying to give out equal small amounts – just walking around the room holding the gallon jug upside down, letting it drip into a cup. “We need more!” was the universal chant. At the end of the hour, several dutifully returned their cups to me – in case someone else needed their dregs. As the bell rang and the day ended, I had 5 cups. Two were really empty, but three had some glue. Two actually had more glue than I had originally given out, their owners having already scavenged from others. I combined them and wondered what to do with it. It was a dixie cup with slightly more than an inch of glue. I threw it in the garbage.

I fished it out of the garbage. I cleaned up the room (no small feat). I looked at the glue. I considered scraping it back into the gallon jug. I thought maybe I could cover it with the wax paper the kids had been using as a base. I threw it in the garbage. I took it back out.

I really have a hard time wasting. I packed up all my stuff. I looked around for anything to put the glue into. I threw it in the garbage. And just looked at it.

Forget that I hadn’t been born in the 50s – obviously I was a child of the Great Depression.