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"When I was in school, I was allowed to make my own decisions about how many notebooks I wanted. During my three-ring binder phase, I used subject dividers and carried a single notebook. Later, I used multi-subject spiral notebooks that I chose myself, and organized them as I chose. "
I agree! As a teacher, it is incredible to me how many parents call the school at the beginning of the year, wondering what to get for school supplies, because our team does not send out a specific list.
My reply?
Um..pencils? Something to store your work in? A place to put your homework?
I provide binders for math class, which stay in the room. I do not give specific notebook specifications, because every child organizes themselves differently. Some teachers are very strict about organizing a notebook a certain way. I could care less, as long as work is getting done.
Most parents know their child well enough to know what kind of organizational system they need. For a while, kids with ADD were given Trapper keepers, so they had "a place for everything." I find those to be horrible for kids with severe organizational issues. One notebook. One folder. If they know one place where things go, great. At least we know it will be there.
And, as a teacher, it is incredible to me how few of those parents, who were so very concerned about supplies, have the ghost of a clue what their children are learning, struggling with learning, or are being bored by, in school.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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I agree as well about having your own choice in how to organize your school stuff. I hated it in middle school when I had teacher tell me how to set up a binder, what the dividers should be labeled as, etc. I prefer (and I think a lot of other people do as well) being able to do things my own way.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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My sister, who just started high school this year, was also confused about what she should have.
The rest of my family sorted her out quickly enough: "Uh, a binder for each class, paper, and a pencil case with all the standard bits and pieces?"
I guess it's because in elementary school everything's so organised. You have to have duotangs of a certain colour and what not.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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The problem with mandated organizational methods is that people don't think the same way. My notes in law school were useless to anyone else, but they were exactly what I needed. More than half that was in the organization.
Had someone told me how to divide it up, I would have been very annoyed.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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when I was in grade school and Jr. High they always wanted very specific school supplies, but they never actually USED them in class. It was so aggravating to have to get the special highliter colors that weren't sold as one package and then never use them. WTF?
Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I do demand dry erase markers. I can save so much paper that way. I hand them a sheet protector for their math binder, and they can reuse game boards, graph paper, all sorts of activities. Plus, we use whiteboards, and they love those.
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Ha! with all the technology we have, the use of whiteboards in the classroom, which I see more and more, is basically the same thing as a slate and chalk.
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I want a projector and a laptop when I become a teacher. At my high school all teachers got a choice between the two, for school related work. Made for some interesting lessons.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I totally agree that the eraser was ridiculous. However, I totally disagreed on the calculator. Calculators are more than just a set of functions these days. They have programs and communicate with each other and all sorts of stuff. The programs can be different for each brand and version so if you have the kids use that function and they have a different model, they won't be able to just get a program from you. And of course, we had games that got transfered between calculators. And we had to be compatible with the teacher's computer so she could print out certain assignments. Past the standard calculator, you really do need to just assign the one you will use.
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Mar 2006
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We have very specific lists. No Trapper Keepers. No gel pens. So many pencils, an "unlimited" supply of lined paper, folders and spiral binders in matching colors, etc. They send lists to Wal-Mart, Target, Office Max and Hy-Vee and the parents have to go get them.
In middle school, the kids are in "teams." Each team had its own list. The elementary lists vary from school to school in the same district. Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I picked up the school supply lists at Staples for all of the local elementaries this year (because I'm currently figuring out what I want to do as a teacher). It was really fasinating what they wanted, like some teachers required one blue, red, yellow, green, and purple spiral tear out notebook, college rule 70 sheets. And others said "bring something to write with"
With the budget cuts though most asked for ziplock bags, cherios, dry erase markers, black mens socks, and other things you'd never think first or second graders would need.
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Oh, Breyer! One of my students invented an eraser for the whiteboard, using a sock.
You put the sock on your arm, as you would on your foot. Then, you roll it down so it is a donut. I called it the "Famous (Student's Name) Sock Donut."
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Elizabeth: I do demand dry erase markers. I can save so much paper that way. I hand them a sheet protector for their math binder, and they can reuse game boards, graph paper, all sorts of activities. Plus, we use whiteboards, and they love those.
My HS spanish class did that, though we had to buy the page protectors and the markers. We used it a grand total of twice the entire school year. Those two occasions were worth getting the specialized school supplies that we'd never use for anything else ever again? I'm not completely opposed to having to get specialized school supplies, but having to get them and never using them just seems rediculous.
Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Elizabeth: I provide binders for math class, which stay in the room. I do not give specific notebook specifications, because every child organizes themselves differently. Some teachers are very strict about organizing a notebook a certain way. I could care less, as long as work is getting done.
And, as a teacher, it is incredible to me how few of those parents, who were so very concerned about supplies, have the ghost of a clue what their children are learning, struggling with learning, or are being bored by, in school.
One of the most frustrating parts of middle school and early highschool was learning and following the organization systems of 6 different teachers every semester! It seemed in 9th grade that all my teachers wanted my binder to be organized just so, even when that didn't really work for me, and was different from all my other classes. Worse, some teachers graded our participation on how well our binders were organized, having them turned in for a grade every few weeks, and grading down for every out of order sheet, and every ripped hole. Forget about the work, you had to keep up appearances.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by breyerchic04: I picked up the school supply lists at Staples for all of the local elementaries this year (because I'm currently figuring out what I want to do as a teacher). It was really fasinating what they wanted, like some teachers required one blue, red, yellow, green, and purple spiral tear out notebook, college rule 70 sheets. And others said "bring something to write with"
Boy I hope tear out notebooks have improved. I used to hate teachers who wanted those because papers would fall out and I would lose class notes.
Posts: 1214 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Yeah. Trust me- I know exactly what he's talking about.
I work at Staples. I survived the back-to-school season.
Here's the thing- teachers are either too vague or too specific. He only cites the fact that teachers are too specific- sometimes they are too vague.
One lady came in and said "My child's teacher is requiring her to get a homework organizer." I just kind of stared at her. "Do you kow what kind? A folder, a binder, a trapper keeper, an agenda?" She just laughed faintly.
Posts: 980 | Registered: Aug 2005
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They're like cheap versions of binders that hold about fifty sheets.
I hate them with a burning passion because you have to take everything out in order to get at paper you put in towards the start of the year. They are also (being made of flimsy cardboard) far less robust than binders.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:And yeah they can be really annoying, but also useful.
I see their use for handing in a completed document or project, and also for preserving flatness of paper, but a staple and a non-prong folder works just as well.
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They are great for journals in elementary school where you don't want the kid to take the project out. I also kind of like them for completed projects.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I don't know about anyone else, but as I got older, I took the "requirements" less and less seriously. By time I finished HS, I carried 3-5 folded up sheets of notebook paper and a pen in my back pocket. My friends and I shared our locker combinations so our books for a given class were in whichever locker was easiest to get to. I remember in grade school though, everyone was supposed to bring a box of tissue and a roll of toilet paper. That stock lasted most of the year.
Posts: 26 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I'm annoyed (and I have to admit my oldest just started Middle School so it very well could be just me)because every day my daughter comes home with something else another teacher wants her to have for school supplies...I've already been "school supply shopping" at least 3 times. Next year I'm going to wait until after the first full week of school and any of the teachers who complain that my daughter doesn't have her supplies yet can talk to me later. ARGH!
Posts: 697 | Registered: Nov 2005
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In MD I'd always notice the large rack of "required supplies" (sorted by school) in all the office supply and Wal-mart type stores this time of year.
My niece went to school in PA last year and I offered to buy her school supplies. I was informed that they were told to bring no school supplies because they were all provided by the school (!!). That explains why I get a separate "School Tax" for both my properties which is different (and about twice as much) as my "Property Tax" that I have to pay in the spring.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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The thing that annoys me is the "community supplies" idea. That is, everyone bring pencils and we'll just throw them all a huge bucket and the kids get pencils when they need to and no one keeps pencil boxes at their desks. I understand how this is probably easier for the teacher, I get it.
But, what happens, is parents don't buy supplies, because they know their kids will still get some out of the community bucket. so the teachers start asking parents for more and more supplies, knowing that the ones who do buy supplies will have to supply not only their own children, but the kids of the people who don't bother getting supplies.
Instead of one box of pencils, I'm now asked to bring 60 pencils. yes, 60 I was told five boxes of twelve pre-sharpened pencils. They're only in school for 180 days, so you mean to tell me they need a new pencil every three days? I was told to bring two pairs of scissors - now I know that my kids have brought home scissors at the end of the year, scissors should last more than one school year so I know this is because the teacher knows that not all parents will bring them so I'm paying for someone else to have a pair of scissors.
A friend of mine refused to play the game this year - she showed up with one pack of pencils, one pair of scissors, one thing of glue, etc. and told the teacher if her child ran out of supplies to let her know, she would supply her own kid, but she wasn't supplying the whole class. That's what I plan to do next year - bring enough for my child and make it clear that if my child needs additional supplies, I'll supply them as needed.
It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't that on top of the ridiculous supply lists we're asked to make a $35 class supply donation. And that doesn't even cover things like music and art, for which we're asked to make additional donations.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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I don't have any problem with teachers requiring dry erase markers, or black pens, or looseleaf paper or pretty much any other standard school supply.
What bothers me is when they get too specific about the supplies. The example in OSC's column of the specific brand and model of calculator would have set me off. Tell me my child needs a calculator, FINE. Tell me she needs a scientific calculator. GREAT. But don't specify any more than that - if you do, there are definite control issues going on.
Junior high school teachers were the worst for this in my experience. They wanted a specific brand of paper/binder/pencil etc. I bought what I bought for the rest of us (at one point, we had 9 students in our household, in elementary, middle, high schools and university - I bought what was on SALE!!). I had neither the time, energy or money to buy different things for anyone. I had one (middle school English)teacher call to complain and I let her have an earful. I told her that unless she was willing to bear the cost of the supplies, she would just have to work with what we had.
When my children were small (and I only had one or two in school), I would buy exactly what was on the lists that were sent home - to the letter. After a couple of years, I became good friends with a couple who both taught at the elementary school my girls went to. I was getting ready for our yearly trek to the nearest town to buy our supplies, when my friend (who was to be my daughter's teacher the next year) asked to see the list. I was confused, because, as the teacher, I thought he WROTE the list. But he said in the 15 years he'd been teaching at the school, he'd never even seen the list.
After that, I just bought supplies "in bulk" for my family (spiral notebooks when they were on sale for 15cents each, looseleaf paper, boxes of pens and pencils, white glue, scissors, crayons, index cards etc) until after they'd been to the first few classes, where they'd learn if they'd need any more obscure supplies (calculators, graph paper, etc).
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
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Calculator I completely understand, at least at a certain level. Trying to do a unified lesson on how to use a TI-83 to graph a parabola in AP Calc is really hard when different kids use different (more advanced) calculators.
Granted I didn't go looking for the OSC column so maybe he was talking about younger kids, but there's a point where it's really not all that ridiculous.
As far as the other stuff goes...I used to *love* buying school supplies when I was younger. But I remember being *really* frustrated with middle school teachers who wanted everything a certain way and wouldn't let you deviate from that. I like stuff "Just So", but I want it to be just how I like it.
By far my favorite, though, are *college professors* who try to dictate what you need. Yeah, right.
Posts: 1784 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Now, as a band director, I have a fairly specific list based on what level of ability each student is at, as well as what instrument they play. For instance, certain clarinet mouthpieces work better than others. Also, I'm picky about what brand of reed they select, because I'm aware of the manufacturing process that goes into different brands.
On the surface, Mr. Card's anecdote about the Pentel Click Eraser looks just the same as me saying that clarinetists in middle school should use the Vandoren 5RV Profile 88 mouthpiece. But from my perspective, this makes a profound difference in the ease of producing a sound and the quality thereof. I haven't a clue how a Pentel eraser would make a lick of difference in adding and subtracting.
Posts: 1099 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I'm applying to teach in PA now Karl! Or probably not because I haven't been through an area of it I fell in love with, but well that sounds lovely.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I have to disagree about the calculators. We should not be teaching the kids to do the precise steps required to get a parabola on one particular type. We should instead teach them to understand what a calculator does, and to have a mental model of how you can get it to do what you want. The steps to get a particular parabola is useless micro-management; the steps to figure out how this calculator wants graph input is a useful thought process. For teaching generalised 'calculator use', having several types in the class so the students can compare and figure out is a positive good.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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AP math is way to crunched to have that kind of class time to teach "generalized calculator" learning. Those types of kids are smart enough to expand their micro knowledge to the greater machine, in my experience. But if they've never done it before, it takes *way* too much time to explain three different calculators to a class.
Posts: 1784 | Registered: Jun 2001
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We learned to get Parabola's on TI83s in Algebra 1, they were provided by the school at that point.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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For the specific things I really want the kids to have, I either order from school, or get myself.
And darn it, getting it myself is sounding better and better.
For math, the kids store classwork in a 3 ring binder. I have a different color for each class. I can see, and they can too, at a glance, which drawer a missing binder will go into.
If I told each child in each class, "Bring a red one-inch binder," I would wait half the year. This year, the binders the school ordered, at no expense to me, are all WHITE. This will drive me insane, but not as much as the fact that I STILL DON'T HAVE THEM. Staples always came through the week before school with a 50 cent deal. So, fifty bucks out of pocket, or I have used my fifty dollar PTO check for it. This year, the cheapest was 97 cents.
No one has dropped their temporary folder...yet. But more and more things are being stored there, so when one falls, and another falls on top of it, or a whole handful of them fall, oh my, you will have to scrape me off the ceiling.
My point? The things that I know I myself am anal about, I get myself. Or I end up with white binders which do not exist. I actually tell the kids, "OK, put this in the pretend Vocabulary section of your temporary folder-binder."
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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quote:Originally posted by scholar: I totally agree that the eraser was ridiculous. However, I totally disagreed on the calculator. Calculators are more than just a set of functions these days.
I would have gotten sent to the principal's office if I'd brought a calculator into class. If I did it during a test, I probably would have been suspended.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Whatever, parabolas were just an example. I spent a lot more time with the calculator in calculus than in algebra.
Posts: 1784 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Oh I know, it's just that you're a few years older than me (I think) and by the time I got to school, it was even more common and expected. We had to have scientifics for second semester of 7th grade, and have needed them ever sense.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Kasie H: Whatever, parabolas were just an example. I spent a lot more time with the calculator in calculus than in algebra.
WHAT?????? I was NEVER, NEVER allowed to use a calculator in any of the calculus or higher level math classes I've taken. In my other engineering classes, I do the calculus/algebra by hand and only use the calculator for crunching numbers. I personally think calculators should be banned from all math classes.
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In my experience, calculator use in math classes outside of high school is rare. It seems to be pretty much the rule in high school though.
There is some value in being able to graph things quickly and easily, especially when your just starting out.
Personally the part that bothers me the most are the people that can't do something like the quadratic formula without using the little program their teacher gave them. Or better yet, doesn't know what an exponetial is or what its graph would look like. (This particular student was a pre-med here at cornell.) Most students that are really dependent on the calculator have trouble estimating an answer or judging if their answer makes sense (ie. as a check for errors). Algebra skills with symbols seems to be a problem too (not completely sure this is related to calculators though.) These are really the bigger problems in my mind, than the use of calculators altogether. Admittly I'm seeing these things in a chemistry class rather than a math class but still.
I don't think using a calculator held back my math skills. I had a calculator in math class from 7th grade to 11th grade; we didn't use one in calculus senior year.
Posts: 1621 | Registered: Oct 2001
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And when I took calculus (a bit more than 10 years ago), we were allowed calculators but not graphing calculators. Same for chemistry, actually.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Teachers never gave out programs- well except for one teacher gave out Inequalz- which was an App not a program that was able to graph vertical lines and have more complex graphing functioins for inequalities.
However, I made up my own math programs all the time. By the time you figure out how to enter in the code and have it work- you understand the math well enough I think.
Posts: 980 | Registered: Aug 2005
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We used to get one pencil, one eraser, and one ruler at the beginning of the year in elementary, as well as the necessary notebooks. Anything further or alternate was up to us.
In high school, I don't think I ever had a teacher tell me what to use. My mom bought whatever was on sale for us.
Now, in uni, I raid my mom's perpetual supply bin, because she sees things on sale and just gets them. Or I shell out $5 to buy a pad of looseleaf paper at 845am for my 9am class, for which I forgot to bring paper. Basically, my school supplies appear or accumulate over the course of the year, and I attract pens like a magnet somehow.
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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We are only allowed a specific type of calculators in exams because some calculators have memory functions that you could store a whole lot of information on that you could use in the exam and that equals cheating. So to stop cheating the uni only allows a specific calculator into exams.
But anyway thats at uni and not in high school etc.
Posts: 315 | Registered: Jun 2002
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quote:The steps to get a particular parabola is useless micro-management; the steps to figure out how this calculator wants graph input is a useful thought process. For teaching generalised 'calculator use', having several types in the class so the students can compare and figure out is a positive good.
you know I spent a lot of time in AP calc ignoring the professor and playing with my calculator to figure out how it worked. funnily enough I wouldn't put a problem for homework into the calculator until I'd worked it out by hand, I liked drawing the graphs but once it got into crazy wavy graphs you couldn't work out quickly I used the calc.
I actually know the specific calculator OSC mentioned, it was brand new when I was starting algebra, it was a two line scientific calculator and the only one I used for all math through calculus, and I still used it for some check my work number crunching as I found it easier than a graphing calculator.
It'd be exactly the sort of calculator I'd ask parents to buy if I were teaching advanced math/algebra to middle school students, because everyone that didn't have a calc like mine was clearly at a disadvantage.
quote:and I attract pens like a magnet somehow.
So it's You! I'm always missing pens, seems like they're constantly flying away from me. I'd buy bags every semester and somehow still be begging pens for the last two weeks of school. Some of my friends were astonished when we were buying supplies, one spent ages and ages looking for the best sort of particular pen she wanted, whereas I grabbed the first two bulk bags of pentels I could find. In fact I think a pen just zipped off my desk into the nether world where pens hide (I think it's adjacent, dimensionally, to the sock nether world, but that's just a pet theory of mine).
Posts: 128 | Registered: Aug 2006
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And we had to be compatible with the teacher's computer so she could print out certain assignments. Past the standard calculator, you really do need to just assign the one you will use.
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Basically, my school supplies appear or accumulate over the course of the year, and I attract pens like a magnet somehow.
