Tag: school supplies

On setting my money on fire

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching3 Comments

Witness my latest addition to my classroom, a “boneless loveseat,” that shipped compressed into a very tiny rectangular solid and expanded rapidly into that once I took it out of the packaging. It can supposedly support 600 pounds of humanity; I can say that when I sat on it the back did not feel especially comfortable but the seat held me up just fine and I didn’t have trouble getting out of it. I’m considering a matching chair to go with it. Supposedly this thing needs 48 hours in order to completely decompress and it was almost unsettling to look at it after the first batch of expansion was done; the damn thing always looked like it was moving, but in this weirdly imperceptible way. I’m going to take another picture of it tomorrow from as close to the same angle as I can and see if it looks bigger.

This is, as you all well know, my greatest hypocrisy; I genuinely think that teachers should not spend money on their classrooms and yet I lavish hundreds of dollars on mine for fun new shit every year even before we get to the school supplies. Remember, I already bought myself a new Goddamn desk chair. That loveseat was pretty cheap as such things go, but still.

(Donated supplies have begun arriving, by the way; my deepest thanks to those of you who have contributed. The link is here if you haven’t yet and want to; if you don’t, that’s absolutely fine.)

In accordance with prophecy, our new textbooks have not arrived yet; at this point I’m fully expecting to not see them before October. I hope I’m wrong. We should’ve had the damned things before school let out so that we could familiarize ourselves with them over the summer. I wouldn’t have done it, mind you, but at least I’d have spent the summer feeling guilty like I should have and not waiting for the opportunity to feel guilty.

Anyway, I got my desk beaten into shape; tomorrow we’ll look at starting to get things up on the walls. I also got a bunch of clothes shopping done today, so I can stop stressing about that for a while. Whee!

Also, here’s what the loveseat looked like before I opened it up. Note the bankers’ box next to it, for scale.

And I’m putting this at the bottom because I’m hoping no one notices it. I’m also considering this, because I’m an idiot:

I’m not even sure where I would put it. I’m running out of floor and wall space at this point.

On school supplies and other annoying arguments

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I feel like there’s something in the air out there this year, where the standard beginning of school arguments are just a little bit louder and angrier than they have been in previous years. So lemme match some energy here.

This is showing itself in two major ways: the “I’m not buying any school supplies, or if I buy school supplies, every single thing is for my kid” crowd, and the people who slept through and/or failed large portions of their school experiences insisting that schools should teach skills that, generally, schools already teach. There’s a video floating around of some fifty-something dipshit loudly and obnoxiously insisting that schools need a class called “life,” and the first thing he suggests that the “life” class should teach is balancing a checkbook, a skill that no human being has needed in at least twenty years.

Lemme throw out a couple of real obvious comments:

  1. Teachers shouldn’t be responsible for spending a single dime for supplies in their classrooms. The fact that most of us do it anyway and that I do it more often than most is only evidence that I don’t have the courage of my convictions and that the entire enterprise is set up to take advantage of people with consciences.
  2. You’re responsible for your own Goddamned kid so buy the fucking supplies.
  3. If your teacher lets your kid keep their crayons, fine. If your teacher puts all the crayons into a communal pot and lets kids take them as necessary, fine. Either way, buy the fucking crayons and shut the fuck up unless you want me showing up at your job and criticizing your cocksucking technique.
  4. Also, no one is trying to take your kid’s backpack, idiot. No one is advocating for communal lunchboxes. But there’s no reason why little Tragedeigh’s crayons and Kleenex can’t be shared among the class.
  5. There are other places for people to learn things that are not schools, and if you think there is some specific skill that your child lacks that genuinely isn’t taught in the schools any longer, you will not lose custody of your child if you teach them that skill yourself.
  6. That said, I took Home Ec and several shop classes in middle school. I remember having a genuinely good time in my shop classes, including one on architectural drafting. Mr. Korkhouse was awesome. If you want them back, that’s great; maybe advocate for a model in education where things that aren’t directly measurable by standardized tests still get to matter? Believe me, you won’t find any teachers who disagree with you here.
  7. In addition, the vast number of things that these people claim are not being taught in school actually are being taught in school, or if they aren’t being explicitly taught, they’re being taught by inference. IE, if you actually want to balance a checkbook for some fucking reason– I don’t know, maybe you’re at a Ren Faire or something– you need to be able to a) read, b) add, and c) subtract. We teach all of those things. Same shit with “nobody taught me how to do my taxes!” except add multiplying and dividing.

Anyway, that’s all an irate and profane lead-in to my yearly bleg; my readers have been excessively generous over the last few years, and while I don’t think you should be on the hook for buying shit for my classroom any more than I am, some of you are willing to buy shit anyway. My classroom Amazon wishlist is here, and school starts in about two weeks. If anyone cares to chip in some folders or some dry-erase markers, I will be immensely grateful.

Made some progress

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Kinda lost my mind at the office closet just now, and pulled out a trash bag worth of just the most random shit imaginable that at some point I (possibly my wife, but let’s be real) decided needed to be saved. The above is the “after” picture, and as you can see, it’s still chaos.

Spoiler alert: none of this needed to be saved. Perhaps the lowest item on that scale was the pile of greeting cards I found, all for various events– birthdays, anniversaries, thinking of you, etcetera– all of which were blank. So at some point we … acquired some surplus cards? For some reason? And then just stuck them in the closet, forever? Construction paper so old that it has faded in a lightless closet. Three books of “tracing paper” that has price tags on it that have got to be forty years old. I suspect we moved these books of tracing paper from our previous house.

I’ve been looking for a project; I’m going to liquidate this fucking closet over the next couple of days.

Anybody want a ukulele? Or, seriously, twenty longboxes of comic books? Please, someone, take my comic books.

THANK YOU

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I am an idiot, and got distracted, and I did not successfully get a picture of the pile of donated supplies. Be aware that probably 75% of this cabinet is donated, and this isn’t everything.

There are 2500 pencils in a different cabinet, and look at all the markers.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Let’s see

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I didn’t take any pictures at work today, but the classroom is coming along nicely even if it’s chewing holes in my bank account along the way. I really like the new room, though, and the first year in a new room is always more expensive, so hopefully what I’ve bought will last a while. I did discover, to my vague embarrassment and deep chagrin, that I managed to order rope lights twice, once very early in the summer and– and this was my critical mistake– brought to my classroom in June, and once in late July and brought to my classroom yesterday. I didn’t even notice the first set of lights yesterday since they were in the closet in my original classroom; I had a great moment when I found six boxes in my closet as I was moving stuff from one room to the other and for a few minutes couldn’t remember what the hell was in them. Then I remembered that at one point I’d been thinking I needed a powered USB hub, and I couldn’t figure out why I needed that, since the rope lights I just brought in plug in with a regular plug, and … shit.

Then I had to order a damn powered USB hub.

I have so many packages coming this weekend, y’all.

(You can still help me out with school supplies if you want, by the way. I’ll love you forever if you do!)

I am going to end up starting a fire in this room once everything is plugged in, y’all. I did find two more plugs in the room I hadn’t initially noticed, up near the ceiling next to a truly ancient tube TV that definitely doesn’t need to be plugged in and I’m going to see if I can get them to remove altogether. That brings the total to ten, two of which are simultaneously nearly inaccessible and somehow still perfect for a couple of the things I was going to stick in that corner anyway. Those ten plugs will have to power approximately fourteen thousand different things. I’m, uh, gonna have to do some extensive cable management.

I may not be able to make it over on Monday, but I’ll definitely be in my room every other day next week, since I also have a ton of curricular work to do and I want the room completely ready to go by the time I’m officially on the clock.

Anyway, in lieu of a classroom picture, please enjoy this cat.

Yearly supplies bleg

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I’ve got $75 in classroom decor stuff in my cart at Amazon at the moment, waiting for it to be tomorrow for my paycheck to hit before I pull the trigger, and I’m already planning on hitting the teacher store tomorrow for a few things I’d rather pick up in person. I think this purchase will put me right around $350 for this year, and school doesn’t start for another week and a half; there will be more. I went to work today for most of the morning, moving things around and putting things together and starting to make Real Decisions for how the classroom is going to look.

Which, uh, means it’s time for my yearly request for donations. If — if — any of you happen to have some money burning a hole in your pockets and want to donate something to your absolute favorite middle school math teacher, my Amazon wish list for my classroom is here. These are all consumable supplies; pencils, Post-Its, paper, markers, crayons, and dry erase markers are all enormously appreciated and will absolutely get used.

Thank you in advance for anyone willing to donate.

On school supplies

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching7 Comments

A touch of housekeeping before I dive into this: I set a personal record this morning for the fastest time I’ve ever fled a PD session, leaving after the keynote address, which was basically a very nice and funny man going “Man, teachers are cool, aren’t they?” I left because apparently having a few hundred teachers in the building to learn stuff wasn’t enough of a reason to turn the fucking air conditioning on in the building, and I was sweating like a pig and I really needed eyedrops from my car and when I got to my car I found it impossible to get back out and go back into the building.

Do other careers do this? Do lawyers need to get together every now and again to get a rah-rah speech about how cool and important lawyering is? Do venture capitalists work in buildings where basic things like environmental control are hosted off-site and not accessible to the people who actually work there? No, right? It’s no.

Can we talk about school supplies, just for a minute? I had a whole rant I went into about this at dinner tonight, and part of the reason I have this site is so that when I feel compelled to rant about something or another it lands here and not on my family, and I broke that rule tonight. The problem, of course, is that now a lot of the venom is exorcised and I don’t necessarily need to write the post. Nonetheless! Let me provide you with a few pieces of advice, for those of you buying school supplies for your kids:

  • Yes, you are responsible for buying supplies for your own kids, the same way you’re responsible for food and clothing for them. Yes, the school is funded with tax money. Yes, you pay taxes. Would you like that dollar back? Go buy some fucking pencils and paper.
  • Many teachers, myself included, keep large amounts of school supplies on hand for kids who for whatever reason don’t have them, and this is absolutely not a wealth thing. However! The very second you imply that I personally am responsible for providing your child with school supplies, your child loses access to anything I pay for and bring to work. This is irrevocable unless you personally apologize. Go buy some fucking pencils and paper.
  • Some teachers are very picky about school supplies! There are probably reasons. Some, but not all, of those reasons may be good ones! Ask them.
  • If your kid’s school is picky about school supplies, however, it’s probably because the school secretary is sick and fucking tired of parents asking what kind of pencils they are supposed to bring and so now the supply list says “Yellow Ticonderoga #2 Pencils” and not “Pencils.” Whatever pencils your kid has will be fine. Whatever paper your kid has will be fine, although do pay attention if a particular teacher asks for loose-leaf, because those little torn edges are annoying as fuck.
  • I have literally never encountered a school that asked for Yellow Ticonderoga #2 Pencils and actually got uppity about some other pencil. I would love to hear about it if it happens, and you’re within your rights to complain about it. Politely.
  • Some teachers (hi!) are going to shrug and say something like “they need something to write with and something to write on.” Others will be more picky. Guess what? Teachers are human, and policies vary from class to class, because there are different humans running those classes. Again, ask, and if a teacher says they don’t really care or doesn’t specify a list, just make sure you kid is prepared to take some notes. That’ll probably be good enough.
  • Some teachers will not have lists at all! Sometimes we just got our job four days ago. Sometimes we haven’t thought about it yet. You’ll be okay. Go buy some fucking pencils and paper.
  • Some things are going to be communal! If you don’t like it, eat a gallon of ass and homeschool your kid. That box of tissue paper isn’t just for your child. If you are upset because little Jimmy got the real expensive colored pencils and you don’t want the dirty poors touching his pencils, if you think that’s communism, find a bridge and jump off because your kid is better without a parent who ego trips about school supplies. I mean this genuinely and with all my heart. Go buy some fucking pencils and paper.
  • If you saw a supply list at Wal-Mart or whatever, be aware that no one at the school knows where the hell that list came from, and no one at the school has any idea that that list even exists. That list got made up on the spot and sent over by a secretary twelve years ago and they’ve been photocopying it every August ever since, and there is not a single person at your child’s school that knows anything about it or can do anything about it.
  • That said! You already know what the basics are. Buy those– paper, pencils, a couple of notebooks, some hand sanitizer and tissue paper, maybe some markers or colored pencils or crayons depending on your kids’ age. Again, nobody is really as picky as these lists indicate. Your constant stupid questions made us this way.
  • There is one exception to this rule: if your child is of middle school age, or otherwise is expected to travel from class to class while carrying their materials, do not buy them a pencil box. Buy them a pencil bag. Pencil boxes are for kids young enough to have their own desks that things can be stored in. Why? Because if you drop a pencil bag, it hits the floor and goes splat and maybe if it’s unzipped a pencil might fall out. If you drop a pencil box on the floor it will explode, and your kid’s shit will go everywhere, and because passing period is chaos and middle school students are savages, your kid’s stuff will quickly be kicked to the four corners of the universe and your kid will die of embarrassment on the spot.
  • This is what I mean when I say unreasonable-seeming specificity can sometimes have a good reason. Please do not buy middle schoolers pencil boxes.

This is what happened after the dinner rant, y’all.

And for the last time this school year, my Amazon supply wish list is here if you are willing and able to be generous.