Supplies - continued

I have decided to keep track of what I spend on supplies (and where I put them) for this school year. Just getting ready for this year I have spent $170 for my students. I am still looking for notebook paper, copy paper (at a price less than $30 a case), and copies of a few things (to make posters for my room).

And this is really cutting back for me.

Supplies - from the AJC

Who is responsible for school supplies?

8:43 am July 30, 2009, by Laura Diamond

Today begins the annual sales tax holiday. Families will hit the stores to purchase back-to-school clothing, computers and supplies.

Many schools and teachers mail letters or put on their Web sites the items they expect students to have. The lists include everything from specific types of notebooks and binders to requests for tissues, hand sanitizer, copy paper and other items.

Some families buy all the items. Some don’t. Often teachers use their own money to plug in the holes.

But I wonder what the school supply turnout will be like this year.

With the recession and many families facing tight budgets, I wonder how many parents will refuse to buy items they think the school should supply - like tissues or copy paper.

(Although the hand sanitizer would be pretty useful with all the worries about swine flu.)

At the same time I wonder how many teachers will stop using their own money to pay for these items. Between the furloughs, no raises and increased health care costs, money is tight for educators.

What supplies are you planning to buy? Is the economy forcing you to reconsider what you’re willing to contribute?

[the comments are interesting: http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2009/07/30/who-is-responsible-for-school-supplies/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog]
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How about you? By this point, I have usually spent over $100 of my own money on paper and stuff. I have been rethinking how I will teach, but I will not be providing paper and pencils for my students this year. By this point - and they have been in high school at least two years - they know this and know the consequences.

O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.

I have spent the past month with family. It has been an education to listen to the complaints this one would have about that one - and then see the offending behavior in the complainer.

One sister spends a lot of time complaining about what awful guests the rest of the family is - don't help, don't offer to help, etc. I just spent considerable time picking up her dirty dishes, putting things away she's gotten out - and left (and this is not her house). My family provided dinner and breakfast - with no help. Made me spend some time reflecting on the things I complain about and whether I do them. What a shock, I have faults!!

I am looking forward to school starting, whenever that is!!

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain

If you want something you have never had, you have to do something you have never done. - Dr Shaun Marler,the Senior Pastor of World Harvest Ministries in Brisbane, Australia

If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you’ve always gotten. - Anthony Robbins

Corollary 1: Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein

Corollary 2: If what you say is different from what you do, I will believe what you do. - Anon

Furlough

The governor of our fair state has declared that all government employees - including teachers - will take a 3 day furlough. Toward that end, he has cut the state's payments to district's budgets by 3%. Some counties have said they will not furlough their teachers, but will make up the state's portion somehow. (The state pays a portion of teacher pay, districts pay some - so some districts pay more than others.)

We start school in less than a month but do not know - at this point - what day we'll start. I wonder when they will tell us when we are furloughed (what days)?