Teacher's Aide

My taskmistress had a long list. The amount of work required to get a classroom ready for students to come in and learn is amazing and something that was underappreciated until yesterday. We had to make bulletin boards by stapling them to the wall and putting a proper colorful border on the outside. I personally liked the gumball border, but we didn't have enough. The crayon one wasn't bad. I'm on the stepladder to reach the ceiling with the colored paper and stapler in hand. I'm scoring the paper with the scissors to trim it to length. You will sweat doing this. At least the tile floor was very cool to lay on as I put the trim on the bottom of our homemade bulletin board. No wonder the dog likes laying on the floor so much.

Putting up the cursive alphabet proved difficult. We lost the letters 'i' and 'j' for a bit. Luckily the board they were on was stuck behind another board (a bad case of static cling I think). Having only 24 out of 26 letters is sure to mess up second graders. Based on the latest education news they need all the help they can get.

Laminating paper folders is a genius idea. Those folders will last much longer now. However you have to cut the folders out of the large laminate sheet. I'm wondering about the machine that is large enough to laminate 8 or more folders at once. Here's a tip: you don't want to trim the laminate to the edge of the item being laminated. If you do the laminate will eventually fall off so an 1/8 inch edge is fine. The precise use of an exacto knife is how you gain access to the pockets of the folder.

My former life came in handy as I demonstrated the proper technique to swap a floppy and DVD drive in a laptop. At least my knee is recovering. I attempted to sit in a desk to get a proper view of our alphabet and whacked it on some post. I forgot those kids are pretty small compared to me. I imagine it was akin to trying to fit me into a Yugo.

With luck, whether good or bad I'm not certain, I'll help out again this weekend or today. If this law gig doesn't work out maybe I can be a teacher's aide.