How many special education students does it take to sharpen a pencil? Sounds like a bad riddle huh? I suppose it would be if it wasn’t for the fact that it highlights one of the most absurd situations that I have encountered in a classroom.

I had just started working in a new school system and was in the process of organizing my classroom. I was a special needs teacher working with special needs students who received academic support. When I realized that I didn’t have a pencil sharpener in the room I searched about until I found one that was supposed to have been on the wall by the bulletin board at the back of the class.

I filled out the mandatory “request for work form” and gave it to the secretary who would in turn give it to the custodian in charge of work orders. As time passed and the pencil sharpener sat waiting, I found myself constantly apologizing to my students for the lack of pencil sharpener in the classroom. I gave out my pre-sharpened pencils until one day they ran out and so did the patience of my students. That’s when the two students who were currently in the classroom joined together to solve the problem, at least temporarily. One student held the barrel of the sharpener, I held the base of the sharpener, and the other student turned the crank as he sharpened his pencil. We all laughed at the absurdity of the moment and that was how the bad riddle was born.

The next day I brought in my own screwdriver and installed the pencil sharpener myself. Two weeks later I brought in a double A battery to fix the clock that had stopped working in my classroom. Had I had the authority, I would have also set up the three computers that had been sitting idle in my classroom for the first three months of school, waiting for the one technology support person that the school had, to set them up.

Why am I sharing this story? I do so at the risk of sounding whiny, to highlight one of the major issues that many, if not all, who work in public schools face – the need to do the work of two people. Teachers, administrators, support personnel, and custodians alike are all tasked with workloads so great that most of their time and energy is spent on “putting out fires”, thus leaving them with no time and little energy to plan ahead, try out new technologies, focus on preventative measures, or install a pencil sharpener.

So how many special education students does it take to sharpen a pencil? – Well in this case two, with the help of a teacher who couldn’t stop laughing at the silliness of it all.

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