And the teaching comes to a standstill once again...

When I started a long-term sub position teaching 8th grade science, Health and Forensic Science, I was thrown into the classroom without warning (the teacher went on maternity leave the day I was supposed to start observing her) and found that my usual fall-backs (make some quick worksheets that correspond with related materials) were useless.  There was one textbook for each class I was teaching. ONE. TEXTBOOK. I had never met the kids and didn't know about their teacher's expectations, rules, grading policies, disciplinary procedures.  NOTHING.  So there I was, with one textbook for each subject.  Assuming I could make copies of a page or two so I could work some literacy magic, I set out to find the copy machine and realized there were TWO for the entire 5-story school (which, thanks to Joel Klein, is broken up into 3-soon-to-be-4 schools with different administrations, rules, procedures and schedules).  Both of those copy machines have no service contracts and are often broken.  For a few days I got by making copies on my home printer, but knew I couldn't keep that up for 7 weeks.  I tried other strategies that were not up to par and struggled without a copy machine for about three weeks.  Lo and behold, one day I decided to try the copy machine designated for the teachers (the other one is by Reproduction Request ONLY, and you have to submit your big jobs a few days in advance and hope the person making copies that week gets the request, reads it and actually makes the number you request.  Then you hope to find the pile where they left the copies...I gave up on that after the second day).  Anyway, lo and behold, I tried the teacher machine and it worked.  So, for the past couple of weeks I've been, in my mind, a more successful teacher and the students have enjoyed class more because I'm more in my element.  Today I copied half of the 60 copies of a test I'm giving tomorrow and the machine gave up.  I have half the number of tests I need.  I now have to either pay for copies at Kinko's or make them on my home printer.  Both of these are viable options, I just wanted to share my experience for the day.