Teacher "Appreciation"
It's 1993, at the Michigan Teacher of the Year celebration in Lansing, and I have just been awarded a lovely parting gift: a Digital 286 computer. It sits on a table in the front of the ballroom, beige and boxy, the 12-inch monitor scrolling "Nancy Flanagan, Michigan Teacher of the Year" in bright pink letters. I am thrilled. My first computer!
The program lists the Lansing business that donated the computer to the TOY program, and their representative stood up for a round of grateful applause at the banquet. As I am unplugging the CPU to take the computer home, I notice that it's scratched and dented a bit. There doesn't seem to be a printer, either. The woman whose company contributed the computer appears at my elbow and tells me that their entire office was just outfitted with brand-new 386 models, so they didn't need the old ones--and then asks for the electrical cord. "We can still use that!" she says brightly.
I have just been given a hand-me-down business computer with no printer or cord. Congratulations!
But--I am still thrilled, although it's harder to get the right cord than you might think, and it takes several more paychecks before I can scrape together the cash to buy a dot-matrix printer. Only a couple of teachers in my building have their own computers, and I am geeked about the cool materials I can now produce--although in 1993 teachers were not yet allowed to use the Xerox machine to reproduce documents. That was reserved for
The program lists the Lansing business that donated the computer to the TOY program, and their representative stood up for a round of grateful applause at the banquet. As I am unplugging the CPU to take the computer home, I notice that it's scratched and dented a bit. There doesn't seem to be a printer, either. The woman whose company contributed the computer appears at my elbow and tells me that their entire office was just outfitted with brand-new 386 models, so they didn't need the old ones--and then asks for the electrical cord. "We can still use that!" she says brightly.
I have just been given a hand-me-down business computer with no printer or cord. Congratulations!
But--I am still thrilled, although it's harder to get the right cord than you might think, and it takes several more paychecks before I can scrape together the cash to buy a dot-matrix printer. Only a couple of teachers in my building have their own computers, and I am geeked about the cool materials I can now produce--although in 1993 teachers were not yet allowed to use the Xerox machine to reproduce documents. That was reserved for