The Tattooed Teacher

Before school started, I decided I was going to try something totally different, a different approach to teaching and keep my students engaged in their academics. I decided to not use any paper.

I wanted learning to be interactive, and fun. I wanted my students to feel normal, better yet, feel like they were doing things that students in regular school couldn’t do.

This is going on week #3 at school. So far, my experiment with going paperless has been going very well. Because of a large donation from a local university, our school has computers in every room. The classes have four computers in each room even though most teachers don’t use them, or don’t know what to do with them. Since I helped get them, and my constant lobbying, I have 12 computers in my room, enough for every student. They are all old computers, but they work for the most part.

All the assignments and projects are done on the computer. Most of my students have zero to no computer skills, and most cannot type to save their lives. But even so, they are actively engaged and enjoy doing the work on computers. By the time the year is done, they will know quite a bit I hope. I don’t have the computers networked together yet, but I’m getting there; that will help quite a bit. But it’s nice not to have all the papers and junk lying around. It’s easy to be organized and keep up with their progress. I haven’t even blown the fuses on the wall except for twice.