Flashcard Frenzy

The first 6 months that I was at my school, nobody would tell me where the laminating machine or the color printer were. Begging my co-teachers to help me didn't amount to anything, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I looked in classrooms, checked supply rooms, and broke into empty offices on my search. Finally, behind a mound of paperwork in a nearby office, I found the color printer, and began the tedious task of trying to decipher the Korean enough to remotely hook it up to my computer. I had to go through almost every single computer in the system before I found the one with the matching Korean symbols, but it was worth it. I now had access to the color printer.

The laminating machine proved a more daunting challenge. I finally located it under a pile of trash and extra signs in a downstairs supply room next to a red machine that looks like it's meant for small-scale torturing. I snuck in with my newly printed color copies when the repair guy (who actually doesn't really do anything but watch TV all day) was out having lunch. But confronted with the Korean machine, I failed miserably. My usually tactic of button-mashing didn't work, and I found myself unable to turn the thing on. So I moved on to Plan B, which was tricking a Korean teacher to help me, as the English teachers still insisted that they didn't know anything about lamination. Ha.

One year and eight months later, I had accumulated a massive collection of flashcards, which looked like this:

This is no way to store flashcards! So I decided to separate them into categories by grade, as well as an extra category for flashcards that can be used for all grades, and one for flashcards that are part of a board game, like Clue or Guess Who?

Inside each box, each set of cards is stored in a plastic Ziploc bag and labeled with a small piece of paper with grade number, lesson number, and general subject of the flashcards.

My board game box also has dice and little plastic animals to use as pieces.

Now, I'm in Korea, so all of these boxes (which my school bought for me) feel awful, like nails on a chalkboard, and have the following picture on top:

If you do this in your own classroom, I suggest a nice plastic box and a label-maker!