Originally Posted by
paoberle
IF there is anything left unused at the end of the year, it goes into the closet for next year. I used to go through the trash cans when students cleaned out their lockers and salvage an unbelievable amount of notebook paper and graph paper. As far as sharpening pencils, it is extremely disruptive to have students continually going up to sharpen pencils when you are trying to teach and answer questions.
I was lucky and had a decent budget for my classroom supplies and didn't ask parents for anything. I liked getting my own because everything would be uniform and I could color code also..the yellow folders are for math, the green writing etc. I,too, didn't allow sharpening during class time. Each day we'd start with a container of sharpened pencils and one to collect the dull pencils to be sharpened at the end of the day.
I know someone who teaches in the same area of Florida. She gets a small baggie of post-its, highlighters and pens for her own use and anything else she is expected to buy or ask her elementary students to provide. Fortunately for her, her Mom shops the back to school sales and buys things for her to use. In a public school district, every expense has to stand up to an audit so I'm not sure how school monies are spent on teachers' clothing. I sure never got money for that!
I won't even get into the subject of hungry kids. But in rural NH, we had many who didn't know if they'd have anything to eat when they got home and if anyone would even be home when they got there. Very, very sad. Hard to get good test scores out of kids who are living under such stressful conditions. Now, I'll step off my soapbox!