School Is Here: Time For New Supplies!!!
“Well the dawn was coming,
Heard him ringing on my bell.
He said, ``my names the teacher,
That is what I call myself.
And I have a lesson
That I must impart to you.
Its an old expression
But I must insist its true.
Jump up, look around,
Find yourself some fun,
No sense in sitting there hating everyone.
No mans an island and his castle isn't home,
The nest is for nothing when the bird has flown.”
--Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull from the song “Teacher” form the LP Living In The Past, 1972.
School starts this week, and Jen was teasing me about school supplies, as we bought some Saturday.
I have bought school supplies for over 39 years, to be honest.
I bought some paper, some note books, some post-it notes, and some yellow #2 lead wooden pencils. It must be a yellow, #2 lead pencil, or I do not want it. Jen laughed at me for my traditions. I have tried the graphite clicking pencils, and the cheaper versions of them, and all to no avail: they suck.
IT MUST BE A #2 LEAD PENCIL, YELLOW, WOODEN, and preferably TICONDEROGA. I also picked up some flat erasers, pink, with the pencils.
Most of the time, things come and go with school supplies, as I watch kids buy graphing calculators (mine has plus, minus, multiply, divide, and square root which I never use and it has a memory—It is all I need), tons of these five class binders (although we offer six classes per student), and folders and the like. They no longer need the watercolors, the paste, the clue, and the tape. They may need a compass, they may need a dictionary thing, but considering computers do spell checks and use a thesaurus, they are fairly safe.
Guys are pretty sloppy and they use the same folder for all classes and cram everything in their text book. Whereas I am sympathetic to the cause because I did the same, I am now a department chair and I have to watch the money, so I charge kids for destroying bindings. Hypocrisy at its best: that’s me.
Girls buy these puppy dog notebooks and the freshman will put their name plus a boy’s name in a heart on it. You know: Suzy and Johnny, Suzy and David, Suzy and Billy, and by the end of the semester, guess what? Suzy has a bad reputation.
Anyway, all joking aside, the ritual has not escaped me of buying new school supplies for years.
I remember being at Shepherd Junior High in Ottawa and buying Shepherd notebooks with the school logo on it for 50 cents in the library and then buying pencils for 5 cents. I think I still have a Shepherd Junior High Logo pencil. I certainly have a few Pontiac High School ones. And do not laugh, but ISU does the same thing.
I keep a notebook per class, as I write down ideas to be used. What lessons worked, which ones sucked and never are to be repeated, and how well the kids responded. I like to use different styles, for example Batman notebooks are usually used for psych and sociology and other characters (Spider-Man, Superman, Hulk) are used for the other classes. It usually depends on whatever movie came out that summer as to which character I use. Using different characters for the classes, helps me sort things. It brings the fun into the classroom for me.
Personally, I sympathize with all of the parents, because we teachers are so officious about what we use. Math teachers demand the kids have a black pen and a blue pen for their classes. Some of us demand specialty types of notebooks (no spirals in my room) or special calculators, or even special folders (it must be red (or name your color here and have three rings and fifty sheets of paper and all of that kind of crap). I mean if you think about it, expecting the kids to buy specialty poster board and have PowerPoint at home with internet access, might be a bit much given the economic climate of the country at this point.
I make it easy for my kids and their folks. Have something just for this class, something you feel comfortable with, and I will adjust. Oh, and please bring a pen on normal days and a #2 lead pencil on the test days because I use scan-tron (fill in the circles) tests scoring cards.
That said, the pencil must be A YELLOW, WOODEN, NUMBER TWO LEAD TICONDEROGA one. Jen would say I am anal about it.
--Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull from the song “Teacher” form the LP Living In The Past, 1972.
School starts this week, and Jen was teasing me about school supplies, as we bought some Saturday.
I have bought school supplies for over 39 years, to be honest.
I bought some paper, some note books, some post-it notes, and some yellow #2 lead wooden pencils. It must be a yellow, #2 lead pencil, or I do not want it. Jen laughed at me for my traditions. I have tried the graphite clicking pencils, and the cheaper versions of them, and all to no avail: they suck.
IT MUST BE A #2 LEAD PENCIL, YELLOW, WOODEN, and preferably TICONDEROGA. I also picked up some flat erasers, pink, with the pencils.
Most of the time, things come and go with school supplies, as I watch kids buy graphing calculators (mine has plus, minus, multiply, divide, and square root which I never use and it has a memory—It is all I need), tons of these five class binders (although we offer six classes per student), and folders and the like. They no longer need the watercolors, the paste, the clue, and the tape. They may need a compass, they may need a dictionary thing, but considering computers do spell checks and use a thesaurus, they are fairly safe.
Guys are pretty sloppy and they use the same folder for all classes and cram everything in their text book. Whereas I am sympathetic to the cause because I did the same, I am now a department chair and I have to watch the money, so I charge kids for destroying bindings. Hypocrisy at its best: that’s me.
Girls buy these puppy dog notebooks and the freshman will put their name plus a boy’s name in a heart on it. You know: Suzy and Johnny, Suzy and David, Suzy and Billy, and by the end of the semester, guess what? Suzy has a bad reputation.
Anyway, all joking aside, the ritual has not escaped me of buying new school supplies for years.
I remember being at Shepherd Junior High in Ottawa and buying Shepherd notebooks with the school logo on it for 50 cents in the library and then buying pencils for 5 cents. I think I still have a Shepherd Junior High Logo pencil. I certainly have a few Pontiac High School ones. And do not laugh, but ISU does the same thing.
I keep a notebook per class, as I write down ideas to be used. What lessons worked, which ones sucked and never are to be repeated, and how well the kids responded. I like to use different styles, for example Batman notebooks are usually used for psych and sociology and other characters (Spider-Man, Superman, Hulk) are used for the other classes. It usually depends on whatever movie came out that summer as to which character I use. Using different characters for the classes, helps me sort things. It brings the fun into the classroom for me.
Personally, I sympathize with all of the parents, because we teachers are so officious about what we use. Math teachers demand the kids have a black pen and a blue pen for their classes. Some of us demand specialty types of notebooks (no spirals in my room) or special calculators, or even special folders (it must be red (or name your color here and have three rings and fifty sheets of paper and all of that kind of crap). I mean if you think about it, expecting the kids to buy specialty poster board and have PowerPoint at home with internet access, might be a bit much given the economic climate of the country at this point.
I make it easy for my kids and their folks. Have something just for this class, something you feel comfortable with, and I will adjust. Oh, and please bring a pen on normal days and a #2 lead pencil on the test days because I use scan-tron (fill in the circles) tests scoring cards.
That said, the pencil must be A YELLOW, WOODEN, NUMBER TWO LEAD TICONDEROGA one. Jen would say I am anal about it.
posted by Eric Sweetwood at 10:24 AM
3 Comments:
I'll second the shout-out to the TICONDEROGA #2. I keep a box in the office at work for our close-out sheets at the end of the night. No one else is allowed to touch the box. I don't know why other pencil companies even try.
And if your students need supplies, do you still send them to the Media Center to buy them?
Lou
Sure I do Lou, but I still like the #2 yellow's. I encourage them to support their school and our Media Center. There is an exception to every rule. The Orange is close to yellow and the blue writing is close to black, so i can feel comfortable enough with a Pontiac Pencil as well. Now if we could a faculty bar in there, hey, I am all over it.
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