I read your post and chuckled. Every week when the semester
is in full swing, I have my tech go through all the cross lock
tweezers, brass brushes, pickle tongs and solder piks, to give them
a full cleaning and straightening. It is amazing what students can
do to equipment.
Hi Karen: I don’t know how long your students are with you - i.e.
do you run “semester like” classes, or only 1 week or shorter?
I ask, because when I was a student at a community college (semester
system), the first thing we had to do in our jewelry fabrication
class was put a “polished face” on one of the hammers. That took us
nearly an entire class time but taught us great respect for the
hammers. Then the last 20 minutes of each class was dedicated to
putting all your tools in order, cleaning up etc… Each student was
assigned a desk which had peg board across the back and the tools
were outlined on the peg board so everything had it’s place (big
files, hammers, tongs, etc.) Our normal class time was 3 hours.
I hate to see you have your own tech constantly cleaning up after
"them". Maybe you should spend some time with them on proper care
of their tools. Just a thought. Don’t want to tell you how to run
your own classroom situations and it’s possible you are telling them
and they are just not listening.