Gratituesday: Thankful for Budget Cuts

In Indiana education, we have had drastic and I mean drastic budget cuts.  This could in the end, mean my job, but for now its main effect is a paper shortage.  Our school is practically out of paper.  This is unheard of.  At previous meetings we'd talk about how to better reach our students, what engaging lessons actually mean, but now the meetings have been reduced to, how to teach using less paper.......and yet I love it.

To me a budget cut means a time for me to be forced to be creative.  If I had paper I would probably be still printing partially filled out notes for my students to use and doing most of the same old things.  Now, my students are getting a glimpse at life after highschool and are starting to practice writing their own notes.  I realize that this does not work for all of my students, so I have come up with many more ideas.  We play a lot more games.  My students love it.  I have to write the questions on powerpoint slides ahead of time, which is a decent amount of work, but it means that I'll have a permanent copy already made up.

Next trimester I will be teaching this same subject and teaching another one that I have never taught before.  Without this budget cut, I doubt that I would have so many resources made up that I can reuse.

Another weird plus is that I don't have the stress of the copy machine anymore.  I used to make up a lot of my materials on my computer at home and then bring them in to make copies.  One day when my principal came to observe me I came in late because the copy machine was broken and I didn't have a back up plan, so I had to wait for my copies and be slightly late.  This would never happen now.

So as the budget cuts remove more and more of our resources, I am thankful it eliminates the clutter to bring to light some of the real treasures that we still have, our creative minds!