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But if non-minority students don't bring supplies, they're ridiculed by the teacher for the student's parents not buying the supplies for the class (even though non-minority parents are just as likely to not be able to afford such huge amounts of supplies).
You need to move out of your white bred neighborhood and/or get rid of your white is right mentality. However, you might not survive, so you should probably stay just where you are. Your statement about minorities is just a generalization that you pulled out of your ass.
My black parents (who were immigrants, by the way) made sure that their kids went to private school and bought more than enough school supplies (always had leftovers). This is coming from a kid lived in a majority black neighborhood where the average income is still $65,000.
Not every parent can afford 5 Star 5 subject notebooks, specific name brand calculator for physics or calculus, along with the supplies for all the other classes and clothing. A roll of toilet paper is cheaper than a box of tissue. So Crayola is better than some off brand? So what! Does it color the paper? Then it did it's job! A BMW is better than a Kia so everyone should by a BMW whether they can afford it or not? And as for school budgets, don't blame the voters, take a stroll through the expenses of your local school board and state's department of education. Want better maintained school buildings, eliminate civil service workers. Locally, they've become a friends and family job position where little work ever gets done.
Well, I have no idea where you live, so I won't be such an arrogant tool as to say what goes on in your neck of the woods but in many areas in around me, the voters are a major - and I mean major - part of the budget issue. And I have taken a stroll around my system's central office, which happens to be in the oldest building in the county. I think they got new cubicle dividers last year . Have you taken a stroll in my central office lately? No? hmmm.... Did you vote in the latest elections in my neck of the woods concerning property tax increases (NETN)? No? But... I thought you knew everything about my area...
regarding the OP's use of the word "anal"...
When your head is up your rear, 4 out of your 5 senses aren't working. Most non-teachers - at least when discussing education issues, such as curriculum, salary/benefits, budgets, etc. - really do walk around in this newly named cephalo-rectal intrusion.
Cry me a river. Sounds like you need to learn how to solicit rich people for money. How do you think anything is funded? Nearly every other profession pays for something out of pocket. Get over it.
Uhh, taxes, maybe.
And the one thing I've looked for in my contract - but can't seem to find it - is my yearly requirement to prostitute myself to rich women so I could fund my chemistry labs. Since you pointed it out that solicitation is necessary, I'll go back and re-check my contract....
Cry me a river. Sounds like you need to learn how to solicit rich people for money. How do you think anything is funded? Nearly every other profession pays for something out of pocket. Get over it.
Yes, but they own what they pay for. They don't give it away and what they buy enhances their ability to earn a living.
My brother buys his own tools but the more tools he buys the more work he can do in an hour and the more he gets paid. He also owns the tools to sell when he retires. All the paper, toner cartridges, pencils, pens, notebooks, books, white board markers and chemicals I buy are gone and my purchasing them did nothing to enhance my earning potential.
I'll put a plug in here for Staples. I love them. If you have a teacher card, you get up 24 of their one cent deals instead of whatever the limit is. The way it works, is you pay the regular price for the number over the advertised deal but they give you difference back store credit the following month. For example, I bought 24 packs of college ruled paper when they did the 1 cent deal on paper. The first six I paid 1 cent for, the others, I paid the regular price for the others but I'll get the difference back in store credit next month. I spent a couple hundred dollars in school supplies during August as I catch the sales and then get $50 or so in store credit in September that I use to buy things like white board markers that aren't supplied for my room (seriously, give me a white board and no markers??? Chalk is so much cheaper. Of course the school supplies the chalk for those with chalk boards. ).
They also do rebates on ream paper. This week (with a coupon you can print on line) you can get a ream of white paper for free after the rebate and a ream of pastel colored paper for $1 after the rebate. If I catch all the ream paper deals, I end up with 6-8 reams of paper for a dollar a ream or less. Back when I was in the charter school, I went through 20+ reams of my own paper every year. Now what I get at Staples during their sales lasts me the year because I only copy at home when I didn't get something done in time to print it at school.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 08-15-2013 at 05:46 AM..
And the one thing I've looked for in my contract - but can't seem to find it - is my yearly requirement to prostitute myself to rich women so I could fund my chemistry labs. Since you pointed it out that solicitation is necessary, I'll go back and re-check my contract....
Now that I'm over 50, I'm pretty sure the days I could prostitute and actually earn something are gone.
Begging for supplies is not in my contract either. Neither is paying for them myself. Though, years ago, and this is probably where the idea that teachers should buy their own classroom supplies comes from, it was actually expected that they put, I believe, 5% of their pay into classroom supplies.
What I don't get is why teachers only get a $250 write off on their taxes. If I'm expected to spend money on my class, at least give me the tax write off. My brother who buys tools (auto body man) gets to write off whatever he spends. I spent over $3k during my two years at the charter school on classroom supplies, chemicals and equipment so that the kids could do labs. Everyone is so worried that a teacher might take advantage of a write off. Seriously folks, what you should say to a teacher willing to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on their classroom is THANK YOU not UP YOURS!!!
Our school does that to, and it drives me nuts. I spend the money on quality pencils, and instead, my kid gets those $1.24 for a 24 pack pencils that you sharpen and the lead immediately breaks off, so you have to sharpen again,and again, and again until its 3 inches long and its the first time your using it. And the bucket of dry glue sticks and markers that nobody puts a cap on, or the broken crayons, or unsharpened colored pencils, or the hollow erasers. I hate shared supplies! I just go ahead and buy the cheap pencils now like everybody else, but my kids each carry a pencil box with their own stuff in their backpack or cubby.
And as far as the shopping list, nobody's can be as bad as ours. I have to go on a scavenger hunt every year looking for the pronged two folder orange plastic folder. Is that it.... no, its non-pronged. Oh, heres one... no, its not plastic. Well, here's 20,000 of them.... but none are orange. I have yet to see these very important folders come home or anytime I'm in the classroom.... what the heck they do with them each year is beyond me. But then again, maybe nobody else goes through the trouble and just sends in an extra red one, and I'm the only fool going to five stores finding that darn orange one.
And being told ONLY black and white marble composition notebooks, five of them, which I follow, and then going to school and seeing all the other kids with sports teams and pop starts on them, all of which come home with only about 10 pages used. Maybe my kids aren't paying attention to all the notes everybody else is obviously taking.
But that is just elementary school. Our middle schools waits until open house, which is the day BEFORE school starts, to give us our list. Oh, the fun of scrounging through the clutter of leftover school supplies in random places and seeking out that zippered three ring binder that is in a pencil display box amongst lunchboxes, rulers, and hello kitty notebooks! Last year one teacher needed a binder with page protectors in it to put her million of worksheets, while the other one needed each kid to carry a stapler and stapler remover, so they could staple their worksheets into a five subject notebook, which at the end of the year became a bloated mess..... all while his $1,000 school laptop sat unused at his feet.
so what about this online school...... lol.
LOL!!! I too looked for plastic orange folders for years-finally found some at a grocery store-I dont think they had to have prongs. ANd we had to have a specific brand of 10 washable markers,and every store had 8 packs of markers. We were not the only befuddled parents in the store scratching our heads. After two years, I started buying the 8 packs!
carrying a stapler is ridiculous! At my old school we did go from being able to make our own list to getting a standard list with less because we were a TITLE 1 school and many kids didnt have money. Our copies were limited, but we couldnt ask for copy paper-principal said using different brands was bad for the machine anyhow. We could no longer ask for tissues or other "extras". Only the basics.
The school my kids go to now gives the list a couple days before school starts too -NOT SMART. I'd think parents should complain about this-sales are done, supplies are gone. We did go and buy a bunch of the things we knew we'd need, but why cant we do it all at once? Why wait until August 22nd when school starts the 26th???
Cry me a river. Sounds like you need to learn how to solicit rich people for money. How do you think anything is funded? Nearly every other profession pays for something out of pocket. Get over it.
And those of us that have taught in nothing but Title one schools? Who do we solicit? It's ok that at tax time my receipts often total 1,000-2,000 for class supplies/materials?
Very true.I'd have kids with NO school supplies but clothes I couldnt afford to wear. I told a student of mine once she needed a spiral notebook (she was new to the school) and had a new hair weave every other week and more outfits with matching shoes than I could ever imagine buying, and her mother came to my class and threatened to kick my a$$ if I told her poor daughter she needed a notebook. Apparently, child told mom she would fail without supplies, which I'd never say and I spent a good amount each year on supplies for kids from very poor families, but this mom claimed she couldnt afford notebooks or any other supplies (I kept a stocklpile in my class for kids to purchase for what I paid on sale, which was not much) but this mom too had the fancy new hairstyle all the time and clothes that color coordinated with the shoes AND the hair!
I don't like sending in extra supplies when others simply don't want to, but my kids are not going to do without because others feel their kids deserve free supplies. I have had kids tell me their parents said it was the school's job to have the supplies. There is a huge difference between those that can't and those that won't.
My first year teaching where I am I had a student who never had supplies. I don't know how many pencils or how much paper I gave to her during the year. On the last day of school, as I was walking out to the parking lot to leave for the summer, I hear a car horn honking behind me. It was her, in her shiny new Jaguar, coming to the school to turn in her book because her grades were on hold. She just drove by, shoved the book at me, and drove off. I will NEVER be able to afford that car and I was handing her paper and pencils all year that I paid for????
Some people have their priorities all wrong....or maybe they have what they have because they take advantage of others.
I no longer buy things like Kleenex and hand sanitizer. I just don't have them in my room. I have rolls of scratchy paper towels supplied by the school if your nose is running that badly. When you add up everything, it's insane. While I did spend more of my own money at the charter school, there I actually had parents who pitched in. At Christmas I'd get things like bottles of hand soap for the sinks or a ream of paper decorated with a couple of white board markers tied up in ribbon. Where I am now, the school buys dish soap but not hand soap so I've taken to refilling the hand soap bottles with dish soap so the kids can wash up after labs without me having to spend money on soap for upwards of 180 kids per lab.
I miss parents buying things like hand soap. I remember one girl commenting to another that the hand soap on the sink was expensive and wondering why I bought it (I didn't, a parent had given it to me) and the other girl said "That's because she cares about us.". I didn't correct her. Unfortunately, I can't afford to go to places like Bath and Bodyworks to buy hand soap for 9 sinks and upwards of 180 students per lab. I wish I did because the kids really like that kind of stuff.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 08-15-2013 at 06:20 AM..
other parents were saying the crayons and gluesticks, etc. would be in a center caddy for a group of desks - it doesn't bother me. And no it was all less than $20 for two 5-year olds for K. Maybe it gets more expensive when they get older?
In kindergarten it was like that, and I watched the kids chew on the pencils from the center caddy. Yuck!
Paper, pencils, notebooks are the responsibility of the student/parent.
There are community drives for the truly poor and usually schools have some supplies set aside for the truly poor.
Constantly supplying the kids out of your own pocket may not always be the best move especially when the kids are older.
They have to learn to be responsible and take care of the supplies they have.
And I'm in Title 1 schools with high concentration of poor. They may be poor but they are not destitute.
And the few that are truly poor get their supplies from the school in a discrete manner.
I'm not heartless but I don't want to be an enabler.
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. Have you taken a stroll in my central office lately? No? hmmm.... Did you vote in the latest elections in my neck of the woods concerning property tax increases (NETN)? No? But... I thought you knew everything about my area... 
