#7: Word Problems

If a train leaves Chicago heading west at 7:35 a.m., and another train leaves Portland heading east at 8:15 a.m., and both trains are traveling at 55 miles per hour, and you are a passenger on the westbound train, where will you be when the two trains cross paths?
If you're a teacher, you'll be in heaven. Word problem heaven. Word problems have it all: critical thinking, extraneous information, drama (will the trains collide?!), names that are hard to pronounce, super inexpensive grocery store items... What's not to like?

Let me be clear: teachers like word problems, but they love outdated, impractical, and/or politically correct word problems.
When math textbooks are updated year to year, the publishers clearly don't take the rate of inflation into account. Why else would Kenneth go to the store for a ten-cent hamburger? What store sells hamburgers for ten cents? Teachers like these problems because it gives them a chance to reminisce about the days when burgers only cost a dime. It also gives students an unrealistic outlook on economics, which is fun to laugh about in the teachers' lounge. ("I saw Joey at Burger King, and he was shocked that his hamburger cost a whole dollar! You should have seen the look on his face!")

Impractical word problems are also a favorite among teachers, and they fall into two categories. The first category is word problems in which the characters do unusual things or buy weird items, such as "Jimmy rode his bike 3 miles to Dan's house and 8 miles to the soda shop," or "Carrie bought six pieces of saltwater taffy and five feet of rope," or "Nick bought a nuclear power plant for five million dollars." (I'm not joking. I have seen that problem before.) Writing word problems gives teachers a chance to exercise their creative muscle. They can write about happier times, when kids rode their bikes outdoors, unsupervised, or when kids hung out at the soda shop. They can write about kids who go to the hardware store to buy doorknobs. Teachers who write word problems before lunch always, always write about buying food.

The second category of impractical word problems includes characters who pay with nonsensical amounts of money. An example is "Jesse bought a banana for $1.25. He gave the cashier $3.00. How much change should he get back?" Why would Jesse give the cashier an extra dollar? Does this math problem take place in the future or in an alternate reality, where three-dollar bills exist? Teachers think that these word problems are "tricky," but really they just encourage students to hand wads of bills to the cashier with no regard for how much they are actually paying. Kids like little Jesse are basically saying, "You can give me any amount of change. I have no way of knowing if you're ripping me off." Good news for merchants; bad news for our future generations of weird-item-buyers.

Finally, teachers really really love politically correct word problems. The definition of a politically correct word problem is one that contains names that children will not be able to pronounce. A word problem about Jim is not politically correct. A word problem about Xavier is. A word problem about Benito and Fatima is super politically correct and should be published in a textbook somewhere. When writing word problems, be mindful of the names you use. It is a good idea to use at least one name you have never heard of. Try the names out on a colleague. If a fellow teacher cannot pronounce a name, you know you have struck gold.

#6: Free food

Teachers will not turn down an opportunity to eat free food. It doesn't even matter what it is, really. If it's free, they'll scarf it. Studies have shown that a plate of brownies left in the teacher workroom will be completely consumed in 11.2 minutes on average. That average takes a sharp drop to 5.6 minutes if the brownies are warm and/or freshly baked. If you have a bunch of leftovers in your fridge, particularly after a party or a holiday weekend, and you want to get rid of them, just put them in your child's backpack before school. You'll make a lot of teacher friends, and the teachers will probably wash your Tupperware for you.
Master teachers have a sixth sense for locating free food in the building. If a plate of brownies is placed in the workroom at the southeast end of the building, it will take 3 seconds for a master teacher in the northwest end of the building to detect their presence and only about 10 seconds for her to sprint to the workroom and eat a brownie without anyone knowing that she has just blown her diet (hungry teachers can be quite stealthy).
Some teachers don't have any scruples about taking food from colleagues. I have had teachers take many snacks--most commonly almonds and popcorn--out of my hands on several occasions. A word to the wise: if you pop a bag of popcorn in the workroom, all the teachers in the building will know. They will follow the scent to your room and stick their germy, been-too-busy-to-Purell-this-morning mitts in your popcorn, and help themselves to as much as they want. It's probably best to just go ahead and give them the bag at this point. It was your fault for not locking the door.

#5: Smiley Faces

Every child who has ever played a make-believe game of "school" would tell you that grading papers is awesome. Older elementary students love to trade papers and grade their desk neighbors' work (using a red pen, of course). For those young people who aspire to be teachers, grading papers is just the greatest thing. The reality, of course, is that grading papers is tedious. Those stacks of papers just pile higher and higher until the thought of actually getting through all of them is just overwhelming. Which is why teachers love the smiley face. Smiley faces are easy to draw and can be interpreted many different ways. How do you say, "Nice effort, but your work on this paper just proves my suspicion that you weren't listening to a thing I said yesterday"? Just draw a smiley face. Want to say "This isn't your best work, but you're so darn cute that I just can't bear to give you a bad grade"? Smiley face.
Smiley faces are like snowflakes: no two smileys are alike. Some teachers draw dots for eyes, others draw vertical lines. Some smileys have noses, and some don't. Some smiley faces are enclosed in a circle, and others are not.
Master teachers can draw an entire smiley face--two eyes, a smile, and a circle around it all--without ever picking up the pen or marker from the paper. If you are a teacher and you are not aspiring to this level of smiley face-ness, you need to reevaluate your goals and perhaps spend some time working on this.

#4: Glitter!

All that glitters is classroom gold, as they say. Teachers know that the best way to jazz up any classroom activity is to add some sparkle. After all, what parent doesn't like to spend his or her evening shaking the glitter out of the bottom of a child's backpack on the day that all those zazzy art projects are sent home?

You can tell how long someone has been teaching by the amount of glitter on his or her person. Here's a scale to help you out:
A few glitter flecks on the face = probably a first year teacher.
Glitter in the hair and/or under the fingernails = has been teaching for a few years; starting to understand the importance of making classroom projects sparkle.
Walks around in a cloud of glitter akin to Pigpen's cloud of dust = master teacher.

You can also tell how long someone has been teaching by the level of glitter detail on class projects. See the scale below.
Glitter and glue are strewn about the page willy-nilly, as if the kids had actually done the whole project themselves = first year teacher.
Glitter details are done by the student, but the professional-looking loops, swirls, and dots indicate that a teacher administered the Elmer's = has been teaching for a few years; starting to understand the importance of making classroom projects sparkle.
The student's name is carefully written in glue in calligraphy and then dusted with just the right amount of glitter in the student's favorite color = master teacher.

Want to know how dedicated a teacher is to using glitter? Just look at the teacher's glitter supply.
One bottle each of red and green glitter = only uses the holiest of school supplies for holiday projects.
Bottles of glitter in every color of the rainbow are neatly lined up, in rainbow order, on the closet shelf = appropriate devotion to glitter usage.
Neat arrangement of glitter bottles spanning the rainbow, plus three or more bottles of all the colors mixed together (a sign that no flake of glitter is ever, ever wasted) = master teacher.

#3: Hoarding

Teachers are master hoarders. Those people on the reality hoarding shows can't hold a candle to some of my teacher friends. Of course, teachers are often justified in their squirreling-away ways; given their budget restraints, teachers often have to be creative and "make do" with what they find, or make their own versions of fancy teacher-store supplies. Teachers quickly learn to be inventors--everything can be something else! Even if they can't see its potential yet, good teachers know that those Lean Cuisine containers/bottle caps/wire hangers can serve a purpose in the classroom. And old magazines--that's the BEST! If you have a stack of old magazines, I guarantee that I know a dozen teachers who would be happy to take those off your hands for you. If you have four hundred baby food jars taking up space in your garage, just drop them off at the front desk of any school anywhere and it will be like Christmas for those ecstatic educators. Of course, hoarding does pose a problem for teachers, in that most classrooms do not have much storage space. So teachers learn to be creative with their stash of trash. Nevermind that little Michael can't fit his book on his desk--he's in charge of holding on to the class supply of broken crayons! When teachers run out of space in their classrooms, the truly dedicated ones turn their own garages into hoarding storage. If you have not reached this level yet, you may want to consider how dedicated you really are to furthering young minds.

Master teachers can take this a step further and actually plan their curriculum around the trash they've accumulated. They spend the summer rinsing out baggies, stashing away used strawberry containers, and flattening all of the cardboard boxes in the pantry, "just in case." Hey, you never know when a desire to teach checkbook skills and a need to dispose of all the checks you saved from your old bank account will occur simultaneously! A master teacher is always ready for just such an occasion. A mountain of old ads from the Sunday paper could become tomorrow's lesson on counting money. Your husband's yard sneakers that smell so rank that they are no longer allowed in the house are perfect for a center on shoelace-tying practice. A box of wine bottle corks can easily become a science experiment in buoyancy or a raft-making project (just be prepared to field questions about where you got three thousand corks).

It's true what they say: One man's trash is another man's lesson plan inspiration.

#2: Laminating

Show me a teacher who doesn't like to laminate, and I'll show you someone who just doesn't like to have a good time! I have yet to meet a teacher who doesn't prefer a crisp, shiny laminated page over a dull, regular one. Teachers like to laminate for several practical reasons. Due to budget restraints, teachers hand-make most of the decorations and bulletin board displays for their classrooms. Laminating protects their hard work for years to come and keeps them from reinventing the wheel every August when they assemble their "Hopping Along to Kindergarten!" lily pad wall scenes. Laminating also ensures that their file folder games, decodable books, and... well, really, everything in their classrooms, is protected from all those sticky little hands that just love to touch things.

All practical reasons aside, laminating is just plain fun. Walk into the teacher workroom at any given time, and I guarantee there will be a teacher in there laminating, cutting out laminated shapes, or waiting impatiently for the laminator to heat up. There's something so rewarding about stuffing a wrinkled, watercolored piece of student art into the machine and then watching it emerge smooth, shiny, and professional-looking. The laminator instantly makes every child a master artist! It is also really fun to color heavily with crayons, stick that in the machine, and watch the heat melt the crayons into a blurry rainbow mess. You know, just for kicks.

The only downside to laminating: cutting out all of those darn slippery pages.

#1: Rubber Cement

It is universally understood that the best adhesive product of all is rubber cement. It is the perfect consistency--two parts sticky mixed with one part goopy. It dries clear, it can go through the laminator, and it doesn't wrinkle the paper. The best part about it is that teachers get to paint it on with a little brush, allowing for extreme glue-application precision. Teachers' love of rubber cement has nothing to do with the smell, we promise. That familiar, comforting, reminds-me-of-my-childhood, stinks-up-the-whole-room-in-a-good-way odor that we can't help but inhale as we glue project after project... we don't look for reasons to use rubber cement in lieu of other adhesives just so we can get our hands on that fragrant little bottle... We like it mostly because... wait... what was I talking about?...