Every year I struggled to keep sharp pencils in the hands of my students! I have tried pencil cans on each table, using a pencil sharpening assistant and, in the upper grades, making each student be responsible for getting his or her own pencils ready for the day....but all of those strategies have failed and left me feeling frustrated and annoyed because, without fail, someone was always left without a sharp pencil right when they needed it!!
Well, this year, I have a new system!!! And so far I LOVE it!!!!
I bought a straw dispenser online, decorated it with cute paper and...voila!
A few kinks to work out:
1. Sometimes the pencils get stuck in the dispenser. To unstick them, just push up from the bottom. Or turn the crank the other way to dislodge the jam. Also the rule is that the students must remove the cute erasers from the pencils that need to be sharpened. (This also helped solve the problem of students getting into that eraser jar 10 times a day--they treated that eraser jar like a candy jar!)
2. Do I have to sharpen those pencils ALL YEAR?? The answer is no. This year all the teachers at my school got a high-powered sharpener as a gift from our principal (Yay!!! Thank you!!!!) Soon I will teach some responsible students to take over that job for me!
So far, we are 11 days into the school year and it is working like a charm! After a few days of training and daily reminders about being responsible, I finally have a pencil system that works!!! And it only took 14 years to figure it out!
Thanks for reading!
Happy Teaching!
--Stephanie Griffith