Wednesday, March 23, 2011

#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.

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