While helping 2nd graders with their math work, I often can't find my pencil. I think it gets taken. I am left with a pencil with no point, no eraser and teeth marks on it. I didn't make them and I lack the know-how to test them to see who did.
I determined to do better next time so I took a green ink retractable pen, a pencil highly decorated with Christmas symbols and colors, and a good yellow pencil. During the stream of adorable kids of all sizes, personalities and approaches to arithmetic problems, I find it difficult to pay attention to which pencil is "mine" and where that pencil is. Sometimes, a student brings a paper for perusal but doesn't bring a pencil. So, I try to be polite and offer them mine when some small correction is needed.
I usually bring pencils with unused erasers on them and it seems to me that the students spot such items as valuable. As soon as a correction is needed, ZIP! Use that eraser and make a big black smear on the paper. Thus, unused, full-sized erasers are treasured. When I mentioned pencils and pens that walk off to the experienced educator I live with, she, like me, had nothing to say about eraser size. Her beef is with a soft lead that very quickly loses its sharp point. I know I can get pencils that hold their point but then I veer into the problem of a lead that is too hard and barely makes a mark.
A pencil is still my desired tool for making quick notes to use in writing this blog. I get ideas all day but I need to jot something down before I forget it. I can know that I had an idea and a good one but I can't remember what it was. Quick, a piece of scrap paper and a pencil!
While writing this, I see that I could ask to see a student's pencil before looking over that kid's work. No pencil, no perusal. I can be at fault, too. How did I manage to take the chewed pointless pencil? When? Is Apollo Robbins, the famous pickpocket and trickster, at work? I did give my fancy too-soft pencil to someone while we examined addition problems. Now I have the problem of gifts mixed with innocent acquisitions and there is always the chance that somebody is making a mint off stolen pencils.
