'In' Boxes

For a long time I had the worst time keeping track of all of the papers that were turned in by all six of my classes. I hated when they would put their work on my desk (disaster area!) or worse yet, hand me their assignments while passing me in the hall.

Where those ended up is anyone's guess. I am pretty sure that where ever I stopped next, whether it was the Principal's office, copy room, lounge, or bathroom, I put it down and it was never seen again.

One summer (summer is my 'thinking' time) I decided that I had to have a really great inbox system. I know there are plenty of them out there on the market, but they are either cheap, expensive, or in some way inconvenient to either my students or me.

Enter Cam.

He is the mastermind who brings my 'needs' to fruition. He took some leftover concrete footing forms from the building of our house, cut them to a little deeper than a sheet of paper, painted them fun colors, riveted on metal tags that could have labels affixed to them, and hot glued them together.

They are great and have been in use for about five years now. You may notice that they are now held together by clips. That is because one of my 'lovelies' tripped and fell on the 'tubes' as we lovingly call them and broke apart the hot glue. BUT, the tubes held up perfectly. The 'crusher' felt so bad that he rounded up a bunch of my black paper clips and put the whole thing back together. Good as new.