Reflection on Scratch Paper

As some of you well know [former students, family, pets],  I do not waste paper.

When I taught school, I would collect paper that had only been used on one side, flip it over, and place it in a drawer.

Sometimes I would take one of those pieces of paper, use the back of it for brainstorming, note making, or wadding it up tight, I would hurl it at unruly students. Actually, they didn't have to be unruly.

When I was at DCHS, and after I had made a considerable stack in that drawer, one of the vocational education teachers {thank you, Mr. Brewer} took my 8x10 one-sided used paper, cut it into fourths, applied glue to the edges, and sent it back to me for scratch paper pads.

I loved these ready made pads.

When I left DCHS, I moved those stacks of pads, and as I moved to three other schools, South Cobb, Harrison, and KMHS, I moved them again.

When I was at KMHS, a fellow teacher looked at me when I changed classrooms and said, " How many times have you moved this paper?"

I said, "None of your business [Brendan]."


Over my thirty-three year teaching career, I saved paper with one-used side for scratch paper. Even though I no longer had my "man" from DCHS, I cut the one-sided paper into fourths, and I continued to recycle.

At Harrison, one of my sweet students made me a box for it. {Smooches to Chris H}

Then, when I retired, I moved it again. Home.

Now. I use it still.

I will never run out.
{Somewhere out there, my 'phews and nieces are groaning: "I guess we can add that to what we'll get to toss [no pun intended] when she dies."}

I make notes to myself and David, grocery lists, write down things I read in books [which I move to a more permanent place -- is that more groaning, I hear?], or I wad it up for Tallulah to fetch.

She likes fetching and batting the paper around.

BTW: When David and I had new carpet installed, the installers moved this huge piece of furniture in our bedroom: underneath it -- hundreds of wads of paper. Bwha.

These guys didn’t speak English well, but they must have been looking at each other and making comments under their breath: -- "what the heck?"

I, personally, didn’t feel the need to explain hundreds of 5 1/2 x4 1/2  inch paper wads. Installers need their own "horror" stories about the houses they visit. Otherwise, what will they talk about at dinner?

*snickers*

I get lots of huge “inside’ grins from the “old’ stuff I find on the back of these pieces of paper.

Old absentee lists with students’ names circled. [some dated back to 1982]

Memos from the county, the principal, or in school personnel -- always a waste. Heh.

Old tests, handouts, or student work [tossed into recycled boxes in my room]

Today as I made a note on one of them, I found old spelling/vocabulary tests complete with student writing.

How old?

Mimeographed.

Even though the students’ names are missing [this is the lower left hand side of the paper], I can see where I had marked their misspellings wrong in red ink.

These students, circa 1980s I’m guessing -- so DCHS or South Cobb, have some creative spellings.



Examples:

Vial -- viel, vile [would work, but not], vail, vrylle

Esteem -- asteam, esteme, exteam, isteam, issteam

I wanted to show you the variation on calamity and boisterous, but this darn, word program kept auto-correcting.

Technology. So arrogant.

As I looked at this, I thought of the resistance to spelling from my students who complained [yearly -- until they just surrendered] about my expectation for their spelling to be correct of vocabulary words.

Student: It says “vocabulary” not “spelling.”
Student: Can’t I just know what they mean? Please?
Student: Spelling is old skool school.
Student: Why should I have to know both? Who is gonna ask me to spell and know what it means? Who?
Student: You’re so mean.

Fighting that battle was hard, but I did it till the end.

I might have been the last to expect it. *sighs*

*shrugs*

In this particular pile of scratch paper, I also found, in my handwriting, a handout with “terms for short stories” and “terms for poetry.” Nobody needs that anymore either.

Eh.

We have the internet.

The world is safe from illiteracy and misspellings.

*snorts*

ETA: This is an inherited trait. As I walked away from this blog to do something else, I had a memory flash of my mother, sitting at the kitchen table with the old dot matrix continuous feed computer paper and writing and making list on the back of them.