What One Teacher Did With $450

This is a guest blog written by Mark Anderson, winner of our $450 Teacher Sector prize in December.

It is well-known that teachers dip into their own pockets each year to furnish their classrooms and meet their students’ needs.  President Obama even made a mention of it in his State of the Union address last month: “Most teachers work tirelessly, with modest pay, sometimes digging into their own pocket for school supplies, just to make a difference.” As a New York City public school teacher, I have been fortunate in the past to receive a “Teacher’s Choice” stipend of $150 to put toward classroom supplies—which was still woefully inadequate. However, in the face of budgetary constraints, even that small stipend has been taken away.

In the last few years, I’ve spent most of my money on the bare necessities of paper, ink, and making copies. These costs alone can run more than $500 throughout the school year. Also, I’ve spent money on food, such as weekly bags of apples, to make sure that my students had enough in them to get through the day. I also buy essential items, like dry erase markers, pencil sharpeners, and pens. Last year, I enlisted DonorsChoose.org to get headphones for my students with exceptional learning needs, so that they could more functionally use laptops and desktops.

I would have thought that receiving the Teacher Sector gift of $450 to spend on classroom supplies—when I have a shortage of nearly any classroom item you can think of—would be a relatively straightforward decision. But it proved to be slightly more thorny.

As this was “extra” money that would extend beyond the basic essentials I normally spend my money on, I wanted to invest in the most essential thing that would be of both immediate and long-term benefit to my students. A rug for meeting time? Book holders that hang off the backs of chairs? A reading intervention program? A book caddy? Desk toppers?

I consulted with my co-teacher about how we might spend the money, and then I asked my class. Overwhelmingly—once we got past the suggestions for video games or tablets—they wanted books. The list of books I received from this, however, was scattered and of questionable literary value.

So I thought about some of the best books I had enjoyed myself as a young reader, and I combined that with what other teachers recommended; I also considered the range of my students’ assessed reading levels. In the end, I decided to buy five copies of most of the books, so that students could gather into book clubs and discuss their books with each other.

The books I ordered multiple copies of were:

• a set of 4 Ramona Quimby books
• an E.B. White set (Trumpet of a Swan, Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little)
• Pippi Longstocking
• Winnie-the-Pooh
• Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
• Abel’s Island
• Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
• The Cricket in Times Square
• Mercy Watson to the Rescue
• The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
• one Roald Dahl 15-book box set

I also bought single copies of Coraline, The Legend of Old Salty (Salt Water Taffy Series), and Mouse Guard Volume I.

When the books arrived last month, you should have seen how excited my students were! They were scrambling to nab a Roald Dahl book as soon as it came out of the box. I can’t wait to see them sitting down in book clubs and having rich conversations about their books together.

This collection might not seem like much to you if you’ve been so lucky to have access to these books in your home or school, but to my students, this is a veritable treasure trove. I hope that these books open the door to the adventure of literacy that my students so desperately need to develop as life-long learners. Thank you, Education Sector, for your generous donation to my classroom.

Tagged as: school supplies, Teacher Sector