June Pencil

Last June I found this pencil left behind by one of the students. I placed it on a worksheet and took a picture so you could get an idea of the actual scale. Just think of the dexterity one must have to propel this little nugget along the paper! The stump of an eraser still in tact is impressive. The fact that a pencil still existed in June is impressive!

Pencils are a big issue in middle school. Over the summer, our teaching team sends out a happy letter to the parents of the incoming, reminding them that students are responsible for bringing their own writing utensils to school. We suggest a zip pouch filled with multiple, sharpened pencils, pens, and highlighters. The idea is that a student can be quick on the draw, ready to jot down a snippet of important information or begin a written assignment in the blink of an eye. Is it too much to ask?

Apparently so. Though the zip pouches often show up on the first day of school, they mysteriously disappear at a mind-boggling rate. By October, all but a few are gone. Students who still have their zip pouches start to guard them like gold; the rest begin pencil begging.

The pencils beggars start with their peers, and then begin begging the teachers.  Do you have a trick for lending out pencils and getting them returned? I don't believe you. I have tried them all and none of them hold up to the test of time and practicality. I have tried affixing giant orange and pink artificial flowers to the tops of pencils with floral tape thinking no middle school student would be caught dead walking down the hall with those things. Didn't work. The floral tape was picked off,  flowers ditched, and the pencil smuggled out the door.  I have tried taking a shoe as collateral for a lent pencil, only to be thwarted by a fire drill in which I must return the shoe without getting the pencil back. Besides, stinky feet just don't make it worth it. I have even tried Harry K. Wong's The First Days of School procedure of marking a can "Sharpened" and "To Be Sharpened" and assigning pencil duty to a vigilant and inflexible student who would badger her classmates into doing the right thing. But the appointed student got tired of doing pencil duty and by second semester it had become totally uncool to volunteer for it.

In the early 1980s, when I was in middle school, we did not have pencil issues. It was such a non-issue that I cannot even remember it mentioned. One simply just had a pencil and you did not ask a teacher. I don't know. Maybe I am mis-remembering and getting old and cranky.

Tonight I am getting our summer team letter ready to send out to the parents of next year's crew.  Again I will remind them to buy a little zip pouch and fill it with writing utensils.  Remember, sharpened pencils. Lots of sharpened pencils, especially.