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Originally Posted by PlymouthDZ
On a side rant:
People are constantly dumping on teachers "Oh... must be SO nice to have the summer off!" Yes, and during the summers, most of us have another job. Or, there are a LOT of us who have 2nd jobs DURING the school year.
My mom CONSTANTLY gets me with the comment "Teachers don't need to be paid more, really, they only work part time."  PART-TIME? I am at school at 6:15 in the morning, classes end at 2pm, I coach - practice starts at 3 and ends at 8. THEN, I go home, take care of my husband and then grade or get ready for the next day. |
I don't know any teachers who stop being teachers when the bell rings. Last semester I taught 6:45-2:30, had play rehearsals until 4:30 (or meetings) taught a GED class two nights a week (6-9), took classes at a local college 2 nights a week to renew my teaching license (6-8:30) and when I got home at 9:00 I would start grading papers. Oh and that doesn't include the saturdays I spent coaching the Science Olympiad team or the weekends I took them to tournaments, or the dances and basketball games I chaperoned for free, or the three days I was in Chicago with my students on the clock 24 hours a day.
I also want to point something out, when you are a teacher you are never "off duty". I learned early on from my dad to be careful having a glass of wine at dinner when out in public because if a student or parent sees you drinking it can become gossip about you at school. Also I can be at the mall/ grocery store/ movie theater with friends and run into my students or their parents and they expect me to discuss school stuff right there. I have had parents call me at 11:00 at night expecting me to answer a question. I don't know many other professions where the client feels like they can call your house or see you at the grocery store and expect you to drop everything for them. If you politely say "This really isn't the time to discuss that, why don't you call me at school tomorrow?" they get offended. Not all parents are like that, many of my parents are wonderful, but I have had this happen to me on more then one occasion.
I don't know of any teacher who wants to bankrupt a parent, but the bottom line is that if the school district doesn't provide the supplies and the parent refuses to then the teacher has to choose between spending their own money or making the children do without. It's one thing if it's a hardship to purchase supplies because it means the difference between supplies or feeding you child, it is another when it means the difference between supplies or a Coach purse. Sorry if this sounds mean but I am frustrated. I love my students and I would never ask them to buy something I didn't feel was necessary for them to have. Students at my school can spend 20$ total on school supplies for the wholoe school year, that is less then some of us spend on dinner. Most teachers will tell you we ask for stuff all the time for our classrooms and are turned down all the time. If you really want to school system to supply more things then parents need to start asking adminstrators why teachers or parents are being asked to pay for scissors and markers? If I ask for it as a teacher I will not get it, if parents ask for it they have a better shot then me of getting it.
Maybe there are some schools that are asking a lot for parents to buy more then that, but instead of getting upset try talking to the teacher, why do they want you to buy certain brands or types of things? Did they find that buying Sharpies instead of another brand of markers made them last the whole year instead of drying up before Christmas? Most teachers aren't evil, they often have very good reasons for what they are asking, try talking to them about it or even asking other parents if their child who had the teacher last year needed XYZ for a reason? I know with 6th graders it is hard to get them organized so we asked for different color folder for each subject so we can help the students get organized, it cuts down on students bringing the wrong folder for class if they know everyday they need their yellow folder for English and their blue folder for math. Also I tell my students every year on the first day, if you can't afford or can't get a supply for some reason let me know in the next day or so because I often have extra supples left from students last year. Maybe not enough to get all 120 kids a new folder, but I normally have 5 or 6 folders left over when kids were cleaning out their locker.
Adelphean- being a public school law junkie (was my favorite class in college) I am interested to know what federal law you are talking about that says parents do not have to furnish supplies? I searched
http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/#federal and didn't see anything so I was wondering if this is a state statute in your state or maybe district? (like I said this interests me so I am a geek about it
) In my state we can require parents to furnish supplies as long as we have an alternative to parents who this would be a fiscal hardship for. For example all students who are free/ reduced lunch in our district get free book rental and the bookstore will supply them with one set of supplies for the year. We also have people at registration to help parents with filling out forms for assistance for supplies and books.