New Teacher Diaries
Hunting for school supplies
Sep 20, 2008 12:18 PM
Most New York City public school teachers worth their sharpened pencils can tell you that Aug. 1 is the date on which teachers may start purchasing supplies with their “Teacher’s Choice” money. You spend every last penny of your money, save all your receipts and, as long as they’re dated after Aug. 1, voila, you get your reimbursement in, like, December.
Last year I didn’t do such a great job of saving my receipts, and then in March I was scrambling to spend all the money I had left over. Which meant I got to buy a lot of neat stuff I wouldn’t have otherwise bought, but I didn’t get reimbursed for all the supplies I purchased earlier in the year. So this year I was determined to itemize all my receipts – starting on Aug. 1. So I purposefully was staying far, far away from teaching supplies of any kind until that date.
Except ... on July 29, I went to Target and they had adorable and, more importantly, cheap supplies — packs of 32 bookmarks that say “Reading ... What a Bright Idea!” and “Color Your World With Books,” packs of 24 certificates that say “I’m a Super Star Student!,” and pink and blue hall passes —and all of these things cost one dollar each. ONE DOLLAR! Um ... how could I pass that up? Yes, I could have waited the two days until Aug. 1 and then made a return trip to the store, but I went for broke and bought a whole bunch of stuff. I’m so excited to have fewer students this year — less than 50 as opposed to 420! — that I perked up at the thought that I could actually give away stuff without going broke on dinky “prizes” like I did last year.
I don’t know if this is true of all teachers, but — I love shopping for school supplies. I always have, since the days when I was in elementary school and managed to convince my mother every year that I needed a newer, sharper, more colorful box of Crayola crayons. Being in the “Back to School” aisle at Target was like being let loose in a candy store after a long sugar drought: notebooks! folders! pencils! I had to remind myself very sternly that not only did I already have plenty of these types of supplies, but the woman whose desk I was taking left me 30 years’ worth of extra supplies. So I can’t really begrudge myself the packs of bookmarks, can I? Shouldn’t a reading teacher be giving away “Reading ... What a Bright Idea!” bookmarks?
I was still without a planning book I liked ... I’m sure you can already guess what I did on Aug. 1.
Miss Brave is the pseudonym for a second-year elementary school teacher in Queens. A version of this post first appeared in the UFT blog, edwize.org, where “New Teacher Diaries” is a regular feature. If you’re interested in writing for edwize, send an e-mail to William Levay at contact@edwize.org.
