Provisions 'R' Us

Who needs a calendar when you can tell the season by the Walmart aisles? Apparently, the new school year is sweeping down the plain like an Oscar Hammerstein lyric in a Shirley Jones musical.

I've been quizzing my boys about what items they need this year. Then I saw this: "I've Got Whos-Its and Whats-Its Galore". Which set me off, of course. Because I'm an insider. I know what gets used in a classroom. And I don't see the reasoning behind some of these required items on the lists my kids have been bringing home over the past ten years. Maybe an elementary insider can fill me in. But as a high school and used-to-be middle school teacher, I am suspicious. It's a conspiracy in the making.

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KLEENEX - What are we doing, building a Homecoming Parade float during recess?
Pardon my math, but my classroom uses about 1 box of Kleenex per week during cold and flu season. At most, that's 36 boxes per year. Yet some of my boys' teachers have requested that each student bring 2 boxes of Kleenex for the classroom cupboard. Estimate 20 students per class, 6 classes per day...that's 360 boxes of Kleenex. Even if that teacher doubles up, and teaches the same set of kids twice a day, for example, as in English/Reading or Civics/History, that's still 180 boxes of Kleenex.

Believe me, kids don't go blowing their nose that often. Have you ever seen these teens and tweens? They are more likely to let that snot rope dangle to the tile and then SNIIIIIFFFFFF it back in than to get up and grab a Kleenex. Granted, not all kids will bring their 2 boxes. But that's still too many tissues for the estimated usage over the school year.

ZIP-LOC BAGS - Does the teacher bring a sack lunch?
The only time I've seen my kids bring home anything to do with a Zip-Loc bag was sight words written on cut-up manilla folders. Once. In elementary school.

INDEX CARDS - Who's writing a graduate thesis?
In high school, the students I teach talk of writing 1 research paper. In 10th grade. They need 5 index cards for source cards. And more to record information. Which not many of them use, because this is not the dark ages where they hike to a monastery to do research in books written on parchment with a quill dipped into a cow-horn of ink made from roots and nuts. They use the internet on school laptops, and save their information on the student drive.


DRI-ERASE MARKERS - Fill out a requisition already!
I only know of one elementary grade in which my kids used a piece of white board at their desk to write things with these markers. But a lot of teacher lists include this item. Students should not have to buy classroom supplies for the teacher. We give them free lunch and breakfast, by cracky! Surely they can learn for free as well.

MAGAZINE RACKS - What is this, a classroom or a waiting room?
One year in elementary school, the kids needed a magazine rack. They said it was to put their workbooks in. I suppose their desks were too full of Zip-Loc bags and index cards and dri-erase markers. But seriously. What kind of masochist wants 20-30 kids with magazine racks under their desks. That's stuff my nightmares are made of. That, and sentences ended with prepositions.

PENCILS and GLUESTICKS and ERASERS - But why?
You might think that when you send a 12-pack of pretty paisley pencils, or those manly camouflage #2s, that your child will be happily scrawling away on the loose-leaf wide-ruled 500-page pack of paper that you sent so loving on the first day of school. Au contraire. Those items go into a community bin to be stored in the pantry for when somebody needs one. They are doled out randomly by the teacher. If you want your child to actually use the items you pick out, send them a couple weeks later, in the backpack, clandestinely. Because in elementary classrooms, what you thought was yours is theirs.

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What do I require my high school students to have for class? A notebook and a pen. Period.