Putting in Extra Hours (The Exhaustion Conundrum)

I have a huge backlog of my Tabletop and Calkins reflections. My posting has been irregular, but I was able to put together this post about last week.

Last week the students spent their time digitally creating their game elements. I've already explained in a previous post (that will be posted eventually) the steps to doing that and how to work with the students on it. But there's always a step that teachers don't seem prepared for or don't know how to go about handling it. It is great that they digitally created everything, but how do you print it? Do you just use the school printing and do all the games in black and white? What materials do you use to print?

I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night at home printing out all of the student's digital materials, whether on sticker paper to apply to cards or hand-cut tiles, or on card stock to cut into specialty sized materials. Then I delivered them to my students the next morning. Thursday night was the worst. I was up late into the double digits.

Here's a photo of Thursday's print-stravaganza:

I do a lot of out-of-the-classroom work for my students on this project. I even spend time doing minor edits on their materials if I have time, just so that it looks good. What I loved the most was that the kids were very concerned when something didn't print the way they thought it looked. They were worried it would affect their grade and came to me worried. As someone who tried to make their visions real and with these being prototypes, I told them not to worry about that. I was more concerned about spelling and consistency than "oh no! A line printed that I didn't think would print!" It did my heart proud.

I also spent time scanning in artwork the students did and then formatting it once I scanned it. It saves them time and rewards them for their unique creativity. Then I had to know how much of each thing to print and make sure the counts were right.

I was essentially a publisher.  It was crazy! But when I can do this for them, it'll help them have pride, which will hopefully cause them to care more about their work. Then there were the stragglers who were behind getting their work done or needed extra stuff printed and I occasionally dropped the ball on that, because I had other things I needed to focus....