Teachers write the book on dedication

[proud2BlibKansan]

Educators develop creative strategies to cope with limited classroom supplies

Teachers write the book on dedication
By DAWN BORMANN

The Kansas City Star


In her first year of teaching, Courtney Nunns easily spent $1,000 out of her own pocket on classroom supplies.

It wasn’t that her district’s administrators forced her to spend the money. They didn’t

The Kansas City, Kan., English instructor is like many teachers who funnel hundreds, sometimes thousands, of their own dollars into classrooms each year for supplies that school districts can’t afford. The practice is so entrenched that stores offer teachers a discount, and the Internal Revenue Service offers them a tax deduction.

“I can’t even tell you a teacher who doesn’t get supplies or get something to enhance the instructional program in the room,” said Dede Shannahan, who teaches reading at Crestview Elementary in the North Kansas City School District.

Parent Teacher Associations try to help out with gift certificates. The National Education Association in Kansas City, Kan., acknowledged the situation by offering free supplies for its new teachers this year, including bulletin boards, wall decorations and storage containers.

Teachers “come to a profession that’s not going to give them a huge salary in the first place, and then many of them will be having to pay loans back (starting) within a month or so of graduating college,” said Linda Hollinshed, president of the NEA-KCK.

Teachers, of course, understand that school districts must draw the line somewhere.

So after her second year of teaching, Nunns, like others, has sought out alternative ways to augment her instructional program without absorbing all of the costs on her own. An e-mail or word of mouth generally does the trick.

Friends were shocked to hear she received a mere 2,000 sheets of copy paper last year. The allotment meant about 10 pages per student for the entire year. She could stretch the copies by using her overhead projector. But gifts of paper from friends generated enough to let her run off tests, a syllabus and pop quizzes.

Budget cuts have forced some administrators to cut back on extra supplies and focus on basic materials essential for academic instruction. However, the situation has improved for many Kansas schools after state lawmakers approved more school funding this summer.

That means Nunns will receive 8,000 sheets of copy paper this year. That’s still not enough, but she’ll make it work by buying extras or asking for donations.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/12436843.htm

[Dudley_DUright]

1. I bet my wife spent way more than $1000 on supplies

in her first (and last) year of teaching second grade. We bought a personal copier at home so she could xerox worksheets and handouts because the allotment at her school was so ridiculously stingy.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. I spend more than twice that much

but this is a first year teacher in this article. Give her time; she'll get that credit card maxed out soon enough. :)

[zanne]

2. Teachers are the best!

Not only do they dish out their own money for their students, they put up with so much bull* from parents, administrators and school boards it's incredible. I tried it once; only lasted four years. Teaching is not for sissies. I thank God for people who do these important, but undervalued jobs.

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Thanks

[enlightenment]

3. Paper is not considered essential??

Cripes.

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. There is actually a pretty good reason for that

Unfortunately, less competent teachers tend to shove worksheets at kids in an effort to keep them busy. So administrators limit paper to force us to actually spend time teaching instead of having kids color all day.

[donco6]

13. Yes.

I can always tell a building with mostly new teachers - their copying costs are through the roof. Two reasons - one, they don't have anything! It takes time to get all that good stuff collected. But the other reason is that inexperienced teachers rely heavily on worksheets. And not even GOOD worksheets - coloring, word puzzles, find-a-word, all that crap. We get them off of those crutches as quickly as possible. If you're trying to teach hand-eye coordination, maybe coloring is OK, but not for 3rd graders.

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. My favorite principal says

she never heard of a kid graduating from high school who didn't know how to color.

It is not a skill we need to teach or they need to practice.

[donco6]

16. Ha! No kidding.

Or cut out a shape - I see that sometimes, too. Cutting with scissors.

[proud2BlibKansan]

19. And the glue!!

If I was a principal, I would take glue away from all my brand new teachers :)

I do NOT let my students bring glue to school. I buy glue sticks and pass them out when we need them. I learned about liquid glue messes the hard way.

[enlightenment]

33. Okay -- all the above makes sense.

I teach college -- my syllabi alone would use up my allotment, but I don't give coloring assignments -- or cutouts. ;) My students occasionally bring in posters to supplement paper presentations, but use their own poster paper . . .

I still think it's tragic that my local tv news stations are begging for donations of supplies (not to mention teachers; the county is short almost 500) a week before term begins.

What, exactly, do we value in this country?

[proud2BlibKansan]

34. Well I hope you are smart enough to realize we don't value

kids or education.

If we valued kids, we would have all the supplies we need at school, teachers would be paid decent wages and all schools would be air conditioned. We would also have the same technology private industry has. (Until a year ago, I had no phone or computers in my classroom).

[enlightenment]

35. Yep, I definitely had that one figured out.

What is appalling is having this conversation with my students -- late teens and early twenties for the most part; a smattering of older ones -- and hearing them tell me that the problem is that parents are "too " (permissive/strict/uncaring/interfering/etc., etc.)

I believe that our society's attitude toward education is the root cause of the problem (back to that "what do we value" question), but I admit that I am far enough away from the system that I may be entirely off-base.

Is it really just an economic issue?

[proud2BlibKansan]

37. It is more than just economics

but we end up paying a big economic price for not valuing kids and education.

The building I work in is over 90 years old. No business would choose to be located in such a facility. The sports complex for our local pro teams is only a few miles from my school. It is only 30 years old and one of the most beautiful facilities in the country. And the team owners are lobbying for taxpayers to pay for renovations to the stadium. For the life of me I don't understand how we dare to even consider paying for sports facilities we don't need while we ignore the need for modern schools.

This is proof that we don't value our kids.

I wish I knew why not, but I don't.

[knitter4democracy]

4. Not unusual at all.

I spent hundreds my first year--and I made less than $20K a year as Catholic high school teacher. There was no choice: we were prohibited to make the kids buy more, as their tuition was already high, and we weren't allowed to ask parents for the same reason.

The tax break didn't apply, as we didn't make enough to itemize, so there went that. My mom, a high school art teacher, helped out, even as she was buying her own supplies for her students.

Paper is a breaking point for many--they kept track of our number of copies every month, and people who made "too many" were sat down for a talk with the principal. Not fun. Many started bringing in their own paper, which just started to make everyone even more angry than usual. Of course, this was all if the copier were actually working . . .

[donco6]

7. I worked out our allocation.

We allot 27,600 per teacher per year. The schools can budget additional copies on top of that, if their program demands it. Ours isn't quite as regimented as what's mentioned here, but that's about what it comes to.

One thing I see happening is that textbook budgets get cut, and the teachers then resort to copying all sorts of things out of workbooks, manuals, whatever they can find. The principal really needs to rethink why they're not buying more texts.

Another problem we're having is the cost of those frickin' inkjet cartridges. We purchased high-speed color printers for each school (1 per 400 kids), so that they could at least TRY to avoid running their personal printers for large jobs. I'd like to get rid of the inkjets altogether, they are just outrageously expensive on a per-page basis.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. The copiers are killing us

We spend way too much on maintaining the copiers. They never show us how to use them properly and they break continually. So some schools limit the people who have access to the copiers.

And in a perfect world, there would be a copier in every classroom.

I finally bought my own last year. I told the salesman I was a teacher buying it for my own classroom and he checked with the store manager, who agreed to sell it to me at their cost. It's just a little copier and it is slow, but it literally changed my life as a teacher.

In the last year, I got computers, a phone and this copier. It was a heavenly year for me:)

[donco6]

11. Copier maintenance runs us about .0079/copy.

Not including toner or parts. So, in a typical school, the total maintenance charge would be about $5,500. That's a lot for a school budget - and that's just one copier!

We centralize our copying contract and bid it out pretty regularly. I notice in some districts, each BUILDING is responsible for all their contracts - the district just allocates funds. The problem there is that they just can't get a good bid on copying service with that small amount. Yes, they'd all have to standardize on one brand of machine, but their cost/copy would be less than HALF what they could get on their own.

Anyway, good for you with your own copier! And if you make enough to itemize, you should be able to write that off as a business expense. Especially since you have it located at school.

[AnnInLa]

9. Our district no longer gives us lined paper, pencils or pens

or other supplies with which to "make" visual aids for the lessons. We buy bulletin board materials, extra-reading books, and, like the posters above, we are limited on our copy paper. Many booklets that I make for the students are done on my home printer. Since we are a poor parish, most of the students also don't have the necessary school supplies, and every year, the list grows longer and longer for them, because the essentials are not provided for us. I am retiring in January....am tired of being dedicated.

[Solly Mack]

12. I spent a bundle my first year of teaching. Then

friends and family chipped in and bought supplies for my classroom. I was very lucky.

I gave away any extra to the other classrooms.

Now that I no longer teach, I buy school supplies every year just to donate to local schools.

[annabanana]

14. America's lack of support for Education

is a disgrace to all of us.

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. It is a disgrace that we spend more on our military and on a war

than we do on education and health care.

[Fleshdancer]

17. My daughter started school this year....

and I've been thinking about this problem since last year. Here in Austin, there's a store called Teachers Heaven and it's basically a supply store for educators. They offer gift certificates and I thought this would be a good thing to give to Abby's teacher. It obviously wouldn't cover everything, but anything helps, right?

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. That is actually an excellent idea

I love those gift certificates!

You may want to check on this store though - with a name like that I wonder if it is a Christian store. The reason that concerns me is that very often, those stores charge a lot more for the teacher stuff than the non-Christian stores do. And their inventory is limited.

Call the principal and ask where the teachers at that school shop. Surely there is more than one teacher store in a town that size. Here in KC, we have several.

[Fleshdancer]

23. I already checked it out and it's not a Christian store...

I thought the same thing at first and that's why it took me several months to finally check it out. I was extremely impressed with it and I ended up buying several posters for my daughter's bedroom. She now has an alphabet poster, numbers from 1-100, days of the week, months of the year, and seasons. :)

Also, I was toying with the idea of asking the teacher to create a wishlist on the Target website so that the parents could purchase the items online.

[proud2BlibKansan]

24. That's a good idea too

but Target doesn't have as many teaching supplies as you would think.

One of the office supply stores would be a better choice. I don't know which are blue and which are red, but I like Staples for the variety of inventory they carry.

[Fleshdancer]

25. thanks for the tip! I completely forgot about Staples. n/t

[Catchawave]

21. The times have changed, haven't they......

even more since my kids were in the public school system. I was the perfect mom, always asking their teachers, how can I help you help my child ? Usually that meant being Homeroom Mom and loving it. Even for one child's special ed classes, now those were the best parents to work with.

What went wrong ? I know we're not losing great teachers over salary anymore, it's about giving them a good environment to "teach" in. Which came about when the school systems stopped holding parents responsible for their little dickhead disruptors.

I blame dress codes too. Maybe my fellow boomers will remember what those where like ?

[proud2BlibKansan]

27. It is not a welcoming environment for new employees

I work on prof dev for new teachers in my district and it is a daunting task. We see so many leave too soon. The main reasons involve discipline and the adminstrators' lack of support. I think most teachers, even the new ones, expect parents to be sometimes hard to work with. That is part of the job, to win parents over and to learn to work as allies with them.

But most new teachers are not prepared for the lack of support from principals. Too many administrators make blanket statements, like "Take care of your own problems; don't send kids to the office to be disciplined." Whenever I hear this, I think of a kid bringing a gun to school or assaulting a classmate and I wonder why so many principals are not smart enough to never say never.

[Catchawave]

30. Oh, I know.....

When my husband retired in the early nineties from a lucrative (0-6) and heroic career in the Marine Corps, he thought he'd like to teach Middle School and share his passion of history with young teens before they got an attitude and lost a love for their country!

Unfortunately, the rules changed when our School Board became political and his ideas for turning the classroom into an interactive experience was nixed by the Board and Principal, because "it would upset the parents".

Their loss was our gain, and he started a construction business instead.

[cmd]

22. Teachers save districts incredible amounts of money

by purchasing materials on their own. One of may favorite shopping places was the dollar stores. I often saw classroom materials in teacher's catalogues with outrageous prices. By shopping at the dollar stores, I could make similar items for a tenth of the cost. Using real coins for math lessons was far cheaper than using plastic ones.

To all the teachers on this board, I wish you the best year ever. May you have co-operative students, an understanding principal and parents who trust you to make sound decisions in the education of their children.

[seabeyond]

26. that is one perspective. parents spend hundreds on school supplies

remember the pencil and notebook as we grew up. today it is a hundred dollars worth of supplies. and then everything that follows the first week of school, we pay for.

this teacher is having to pay for supplies as far as paper, istem, teaching materials, while parents are now entrenched in supply soaps, baggies, kleenex, pencils, papers, pens, notebooks, folders. they take quanties and put them on the shelf to use thru the year

yes

schools are a mess. teachers i have interacted with a dedicated and wonderful. i have liked my principles also. so much........yep

[proud2BlibKansan]

28. Kleenex!!

I have yet to have a year when every kid actually brings that box of kleenex. If they all do bring it, we have enough to last the year. If not, we run out. Drives me crazy every year.

[seabeyond]

29. hence why schools now ask for 2 or 3 from student

i took 5 boxes this year. on the shelf. why we bring 24 pencils. my child wont use 24 pencils, or 5 folders. or a box of baggies. it is no longer about supply for our child, it is about supplying for the class. every year as i buy more, i tell self, at LEAST i can afford it. i have a brother that cannot, and friends that cannot, and i stand with other parents at school supplies that cannot. this year, helping all to find things in walmart, i told people, get what you can, .......i am willing ot be able to add to the pile. community

any teacher runs out of kleenex before the end of the year, please ask. i will bring in 5 more.

as do the teacher. it is now community that is having to keep schools healthy

i guess this is my point in writing this. i am seeing teachers and parents in my schools anyway, understanding we need each other.

govt isnt doing shit, but throwing in hurdles to jump

[Catchawave]

31. Right on !

Our teachers are our most valuable resource, yet I couldn't do their job. Times have changed when s/he was the most important person in our child's life, next to Mom and Dad, or Guardian. Today, they spend more time appeasing parents than educating the child.

AND, in my honest opinion, public funded "gifted programs" are bullsh*t too. And don't get me started on *home schooling* :evilgrin:

[proud2BlibKansan]

32. Hey I may send you my address

I always run out of kleenex.

[GreenPartyVoter]

36. Kick for teachers. (Miss you, mom!)