Binders Should Be Beautiful

Remember that old commercial that ended with "...and I'm worth it"?  It was for hair color, if I remember correctly.  Well, sometimes teachers need to remember that line.  We do everything with our students in mind.  We plan, learn, teach, reteach, test, grade, counsel, and guide.  We give up our lunch hours for intervention, stay late for tutoring, and spend hours learning to use technology.  I could go on and on.

But how often do we do something for ourselves?  Just because it makes us smile?  I've decided to do that now.  My eyes have been opened to how truly ugly my binders are.  I have measured the binders I have (See my last post.)  I have thrown out the ones that are broken and majorly icky.  Now it's time to begin the beautification process.  Yay!

Remember this picture?  This is only a sample of what I am working on!  I am a woman on a mission.

  I have resigned myself to the fact that binders are no uniform sizes, and I cannot afford to buy all new ones (have you seen how much they cost?!?)

These are the spine width sizes I need to make them work:

• half inch
• one inch
• one-and-a-half inch
• one-and-three-quarter inch
• two inch and larger, depending on how you cut them

Now the fun part begins!  I love patterns and bright colors, and most of all... polka dots.  So I started experimenting with digital papers.  I talked to the K-3 teachers at my school, and asked if they would let me make them some covers.  

Here are some examples of the front covers.  I scoured the internet (especially Teachers Pay Teachers) for cute background papers and clip art, to give my teaching friends some stuff to choose from.  Since we are using Engage New York Curriculum for math, we focused on binders for all of the reams and reams of paper we have been printing!  Now, these make me smile =)

Then we put one in a two-inch binder cover.  And this is what we saw:

The page didn't even come close to filling up the front cover!!

So I made a few adjustments to my file, and now we had strips of the same paper to fill up the binder cover.  It doesn't always match perfectly, but it blends, and it takes away the white borders.  You can cover the white lines that are on the edge of the cover page (as in the picture above), or you can let them show (as in the blue binder picture to the left).





                                  
Here's the secret... you print only one spine on a page, leaving the rest to be used for the borders!  (The only negative I see is the use of extra ink, but in our case we felt it was worth it.)

And there you have it.  Beautiful binders that are filled to the edges, and five sizes of spines to choose from.   Next time I'll tell you how to get a set for free.  Because sometimes teachers need a reason to smile.

How To Measure Your Binders

After my last blog post, I set off on a quest.  It was time to beautify my  classroom binders.  I began with the idea that there were only a few sizes of binders, and that they were all uniform sizes.  I typed up a quick template that was one inch wide for the spine of a one-inch binder.  It didn't fit.  Then I started measuring the spines of the binders in my classroom.

I have half-inch, one-inch, one-and-a-half inch, one-and-three-quarters inch, two-inch, two-and-a-quarter inch, and three inch binders.  This is crazy!  I went to see Rosemary, the Woman-Who-Knows-All and runs our school (Shhh, don't tell the Principal/Superintendent!)  She told me that I was measuring them wrong!  I was measuring the outside spine of each binder.  Here's the video     she directed me to:
             
               
 I had been measuring them the wrong way.  I went back to my classroom to measure them correctly.  Here is what I found:

This is my half inch binder.
It's actually a tiny bit bigger.
A spine that measure half an
inch wide fits this perfectly.

This is a one-inch binder on the
inside.  I have several.  They vary
on the outside spine, however.
Some will fit a spine of one inch,
but others need it to be 7/8 of an inch.

This is a one-and-a-half inch binder.
I have several and they vary from a
spine width of just under 1 1/2 inches
to 1 3/4 inches.

My two-inch binder is closer to 2 1/4
inches.  The spine that fits is best is 2 1/2
inches wide.  I know, right?  Couldn't
this drive a person right over the edge?


So.  Even though I now know how to measure a binder's capacity, I still can't find a set of universal spine sizes.  This is just a teeny bit disconcerting for someone with perfectionistic tendencies.

Tune in next time to see if I figured out what to do.  Because right now, I'm baffled.  And bothered.  There's a word for that: befuddled.

Take Those Blinders Off!

"Huge Blinders" by Emilio Labrador is licensed under CC by 2.0

There's this thing we all do.  Well, I think we all do.  I actually have no empirical evidence of this.  Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that we all do this... we get so busy living our life and doing our job that we don't really look around.  We don't notice our own mess.


 Let me give you an example.  My son (We'll call him L3) moved home from college for the summer last month.  He brought bags and bags of kitchen supplies, including food, that he had been using in his rental house.  He also brought two chairs and his television.  He dumped them all in my kitchen/dining room.These chairs and this television have been sitting in my dining room for over a month.
He shows no evidence of wanting to move them.  He has very good vision, but...
 He does not see them.   
 He has blinders on.  (I think someone had dumped the chairs outside one of the University houses.  Ick.  However, I am proud that he is being thrifty, and getting that whole reuse, repurpose, recycle thing, which lowers the ick factor.  Somewhat.)

If you look in the mirror, you can see some of his kitchen stuff on the counter.  I must admit, however, that a lot of it is mine.  Because I do the same thing.  And I'm not about to take pictures of MY messes at home!

So how does this relate to the classroom?
Well, if you're anything like me, you let things pile up on surfaces.  I'm too busy teaching, planning, learning, and having fun to worry about a messy classroom.  I have stacks of papers to be filed.  I have stacks of pictures and notes from my students.  I have boxes of books from Scholastic that haven't made it to my classroom library.  I have blinders on.  Until something causes me to remove them. There are many more examples of this in my classroom, but today I am focusing on this shelf of binders:

They are old.  They are ugly.  Some are broken.  Some are from the teacher who taught in this room before me, seven years a long time ago, and I thought they might be useful someday.  They are all different sizes, and all different colors.  Plus, I don't even use transparencies any more!  I can't afford to replace them all.  I need to find a way to reuse, repurpose, and recycle.  Plus get rid of the ick factor.

The blinders are off.  My room needs a lot of work.  I am going to begin with something small and see where I can go from there.  Binders.  And no more blinders.  I'm going to get started.  Really.  Tomorrow.

Technology is My Friend. Sometimes.

Remember that really cool kid in school?  The one who was a year or two older than you?  You admired this kid, and wanted to be friends... and sometimes you were.  Other times, well, there were older, cooler kids around.  And you went unnoticed, or worse.  You never knew quite what to expect.



This is how I feel about 



I love technology.  I can do amazing things because of technology.  But technology does not always love me back.  In fact, it's rather indifferent towards me.  Sometimes it works perfectly, and my lesson goes smoothly, and all is right with the world.

Other times, everything goes wrong.  A beautifully planned and practiced lesson has to be scrapped while I scramble to find an alternate way to teach the content.

So back to that kid in school.  There's a word for that.  (In my world, there's always a word for any "that")  Here it is:

One could say that kid in school was mercurial.  One could even venture to say that a computer, or an iPad, or a Smart Phone is mercurial.  But then one would be doing something.  And there's a word for that, too:

Let's see if I can use these words correctly.  I want to sound educated and well read (there are other words for that, but that's for another day).  Here we go:

"When I anthropomorphize my computer, I say that it is a mercurial PooPooHead."
Do you agree?  Let me know!





 

My Polka-Dot Addiction and a Calendar Freebie

I have a polka-dot addiction.  There.  I said it.  They say that the first step toward recovery is to admit you have a problem.

 I like them all.  Black dots, white dots, purple, pink, aqua, lime... I make binder covers and dividers and signs for my classroom.  I make numbers, labels, desk tags, bunting and banners.  If you can name it, I have probably made it.  I am an addict.

When my daughter was a toddler, I dressed her in every color of polka-dot leggings I could find.  She does not thank me for this.

 

So, if you're wondering where all of this is heading, here's the thing.  I finally figured out where this obsession began.  I had an epiphany, of sorts.  And it's because I was looking through a box of old donated books, and I found this one:

Okay, so this is a song, not the actually book being read.  But I love it anyway.  Put Me in the Zoo was my favorite book as a kid!  I had completely forgotten about it, because our copy was lost during one of my childhood moves.  The things he can do with his spots!!  He can change their color.  He can change their size.  He can put them on anything he likes.  Hmmm.  Sounds familiar.

I am heading over to Amazon to buy a copy.  I know that you're not supposed to feed an addiction.  But this one is harmless.  Right?

So, about that Polka-Dot Freebie... I made a calendar for the 2014-2015 school year.  If you would like a copy, it's free at my Teachers Pay Teachers store, Light Bulbs and Laughter.

          You can't really tell from this picture, but even the letters and numbers have polka-dots =)

What I like to do is make a regular copy (8.5x11") for my planning book, and another for the wall in my classroom.  I'm lucky enough to have a printer at school that does ledger size on heavy paper, and I have a certain number of color prints available per semester.  So I print them all, punch some holes, and put them on rings, like this:

If you like polka-dots, you must go get it, right now!  If you don't, well...  you're missing out on something that can make you smile.  And every teacher needs that.


Happy (Polka-Dot) Teaching,