I pretty consistently push the "reduce, reuse, recycle" philosophy in my classroom. It's something I'm passionate about and I think it's important that my students learn to use their resources well. When that really back-fired on me was when I started receiving homework assignments on reused paper. They were literally squeezing words in wherever there was space on the already-used-once page. My first reaction was disgust because it made my life more difficult as I tried to read and grade their assignments. My second response was a pure amusement -way to take me seriously, kids.
As another story, last week I reached my limit in picking up/vacuuming little tiny scraps of paper. So I removed the scrap paper box and had a demonstration with my students about what scraps are acceptable to keep and be used again and what pieces are too small and simply need to be thrown away. I had a couple of students who were devastated at the scraps I was throwing away. They very respectfully asked me if they could keep a personal stash of the scraps and that they would use them.
Thus began the masterpieces... and today I received the first one with the following note: "This is to prove to Miss Sjoberg that we want to save scrapes to make a piece of art."
Ok, so I need to focus on spelling and grammar and not resourcefulness. Here's to another day of teaching!
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