I read through quite a few pages, then skipped to the end. I just can't keep up with all the posts.
maybe the box of golf pencils I had to buy is a little crazy.... I am supposed to bring all of this stuff to school on the first day. We're going to need a huge box!
I buy golf pencils as "loaners" in my classroom (students are less likely to take them just because they are too lazy to get their own pencil out of their backpacks -- and, yes, that statement was made to me by students). I buy a gross of "misprints" for $3 or $4 from forteachersonly.com. You have to make a minimum of a $25 purchase, and I can make that up in boxes of click pen misprints ($7 or $8 for 100). Also wanted to say that we haul things on open house/first day of school for my DD8 in a laundry basket. Load everything up, drop it off and bring the basket home.
But they are asking for alcohol-free hand sanitizer. Everything I've read about the effectiveness of hand sanitizer says that it must contain alcohol to be effective.
The issue with the alcohol-based hand sanitizer is that there have been problems with kids consuming it and getting alcohol poisoning. The system in which I work will not allow us to put alcohol-based sanitizer in our rooms, but they also provide the hand sanitizer that is supposed to taste so nasty that kids won't want to eat it. (I am NOT testing that theory.)
On that list there are two to three things my DD gets to keep and the rest gets put into a pool which the teacher divides up amongst the class.
My DD is super into pink. So, for the required plastic folder, I bought her a pink one. She came home with green. Yes, I was perterbed.
I just can wrap my head around how school districts always seem so strapped for cash when so much funding is handed to them.
Because the money that comes in is earmarked for specific purposes. We have a TON of technology. Every classroom either has a SMART Board, Promethean, or Mimio, plus a projector, an Elmo, a desk top and a lap top for teacher use, and at least one computer for student use. There are about 10 sets of student response clickers on campus. We have a standard 30 computer lab, an ACCESS computer lab, and a portable/mobile lab. There is wireless access throughout campus, and all of the English classrooms have a 20 computer portable netbook lab. I have heard parents and others ask how we can have all that technology, and yet there are other things that are lacking. (Or, even, we're about to break ground on a brand new multi-million $ building for an "Art Academy" that will house the band, the visual art department, and a theater department, as well as supposedly dance classes; however, we just cut 4 or so teacher units. If we can't have the core teachers we need, how can we fund this??) The answer is simply that a lot of this technology has come in through grants or federall funds that have to be spent a certain way. If it doesn't get spent the way it is meant to be spent, they get to take their $$ back.
Out of curiosity, why do teachers request different size boxes of crayons? You may be referring to the actual crayon size instead of count, but I thought you might have some insight
For Kindergarten, DD had to have a box of 8, which is way more expensive this time of year than a box of 24. The reason: they were only learning those 8 colors at the beginning of the year. Once they had progressed past those colors, they wanted the bigger boxes.
My biggest annoyance is the 4"x6" Canon Photo Pack (BRAND SPECIFIC) for my childs pre-school class. $15!!! Last year, I purchased. On her first day of school I got a picture of her playing sent home! I thought - oh this is a great idea I will get pictures throughout the year - good investment... That was the one and only one I got last year. Hope that it improves this year!
Also for my DD's K year, we had to buy 2 or 3 disposable cameras. Personally, I think it would have been better to request a $10 donation from each family. If there had been 15 kids in the class, then that's $150 per class to buy a decent digital camera. (Will say that we did get a scrapbook at the end of the year of pictures throughout the year of our kid.)
My DS is going into 7th. grade and they need a ton of glue stickers and 2 packs of colored pencils. I can't understand why they need to color and glue in 7th. grade. But in 6th. grade also they would glue everything in their composition notebooks and color pictures in them.
He also needs red pens - why red? I remember when I was in school only the teacher was allowed to use red pens!
I used glue in my 7th/8th grade classes. Some foldables need glue, plus kids love to color, cut, and paste at any age. (Weird, yeah...) Also, one of our math teachers has each child grab a red pen on the way in the door. He puts the homework answers and each student is supposed to check their work and make corrections in pen. He walks around to make sure they aren't doing things in pencil (for which they get a 0). If they copy the corrections in red ink, they get half credit. If they copy it and weren't there the previous day, they get the full credit, but it has to be in red ink still. So, if they don't do their homework
at all, they can still get some credit for it if they copy the work.
But we are talking about HS students and if they don't have the proper materials to be prepared for class, then oh well. If they can't manage to do the school work because they don't have the right stuff, then they can fail. If that doesn't wake them up, or wake up their parents then again, oh well. Not everyone deserves to pass.
Giving extra credit because a kid brings in 10 pencils is ridiculous and its not fair to the kids that work hard and earn their grades. Personally I think that teachers that do that kind of stuff should be reprimanded, not excused.
I don't agree with giving extra credit for supplies, although I have contemplated an "optional" grade. Bring everything in by X date, and I'll give you a 100. Don't, and you won't get anything. Not a 0 or anything. Of course, I buy enough cheap 1 subject notebooks to get me through, and then watch for Target to mark them WAY DOWN. I got 200 notebooks two years ago for $6. I keep them in storage until I need them. Each student gets a notebook, 2 wooden pencils, a cap eraser, and a pen from me on the first day of school. I have a lot who won't be able to get their stuff sometimes until a month into school when the next welfare check comes in, so I make sure they have this much. Then I sell supplies for cheap (notebooks and mechanical pencils for a quarter, wooden pencils for a dime.) I'd give them away, but they don't take care of them. That little bit of change (which they all always oddly have) gives them enough pride in the thought that it belongs to them and they paid their $$ for it, that I can buy more when I need to and they will take care of what they bought.
