Stop for a minute and be honest. Think of a number number. This number represents how many days it took for technology to bust in your classroom. (bonus points if you have an awesome recovery story to go along with it!)

I’ll give you my answer now. ZERO

There I was all dressed in my back to school clothes.  My hair was down and brushed for the only time the whole year (because it was picture day).  I had solid lesson plans as anyone does the first day of school. Teaching Middle School a great deal of my plans were procedural, and syllabus in nature. I was ready. Totally ready to rock the start of this school year. 

I came in early, finished wiping everything down with disinfectant wipes one more time. Shuffled papers around in piles that I wouldn’t forget to pass out. Turned on my computer. Logged in. Set up my Google Slides presentation that had everything I needed for the day, clicked present. Turned on my projector………and that’s when my day stated to unravel – fast. 😳

I am at the end of my hall, and apparently the tech department didn’t get to my room when setting up classroom technology. And forgive me, I didn’t have a reason to test out my projector that worked perfectly fine on the last day of school….Nothing. They had a cord sitting against the wall, but it didn’t fit into my computer or docking station. (We will later find out that it needed an adapter piece that they had forgotten to bring by.)
I can’t trouble shoot tech issues with 32 kids staring at me. So instead, I went into my back room and pulled out my stash of 500 mini “red solo cups” Split them into 10 groups and provided them their first STEAM challenge of the school year.

My directions were simple: Each group got 50 mini cups, and the challenge to build the tallest freestanding tower of cups that they could. The structure could only use the cups, and must use all of the cups. I then went around with twine, and measured their finished towers. If they finished before the timer went off, they were allowed to redesign and see if they could make their tower bigger. When we were done, we had a great talk about the Engineering Design process, how to work in collaboration as a team, and what it means to persevere through struggles.

I think that was a pretty great save for the first day of school! I wasn’t running to the copy room for random worksheets (the kids don’t even bring pencils the first day anyway). It wasn’t “more work” for me, and there was still some substantial learning and mood setting going on in my classroom.

I found my mini red cups at the Dollar Tree in the summer time. (I think they were meant to be disposable shot glasses. They are a little sturdier plastic than say a Dixie bathroom cup, but in a pinch if you needed to use the Dixie cups, I am certain they would work just fine.)

What a great emergency plan to keep in your closet!? It won’t go stale, or be eaten by mice. You shouldn’t even have to replace it each time you use it.

Next time, just smile, and pretend it is on the lesson plan!