Reply to Ridiculous school supplies thread!

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "Ridiculous school supplies thread!"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You don't need special pens to edit your work. Generations of children have learned to write without being required to use green and red pens.

If you have the money, sure, it's fun to have all kinds of extra school supplies. Making them a requirement on supply lists is absurd. It's like silly wedding registries. Oh yeah, while we're at it, let's ask for a cherry pitter, a turkey lifter, and a toast rack.

[/quote]

I'm a teacher, and I could teach kids reading and math and all sorts of things in a room with slates, slate pencils and an old fashioned blackboard.  I could probably teach a child to read with a stick and some dirt.  But I can guarantee the process would be slower and more cumbersome.

Red and green pens add a few pennies to the cost of school supplies.  Since you'd still need pens to edit the work, you're talking about the difference in cost between a red pen and a blue/black one.  They mean that I can easily know when a student is cheating during test corrections.  They make it easier for me to scan a child's file and see patterns of errors.  Plus, kids like to use them.  The result is a classroom that moves more efficiently.  We might save 2 or 3 minutes a day, but for a daily activity like math fact tests (which is where I use the pens) that's 9 hours over the course of the school year.  9 extra hours of learning for your kid for the price of a pen, that's not bad.  How much do you pay for 9 hours of music lessons, or travel soccer?

If you were at work, and there was an item you wanted that cost a couple dollars and would make a significant difference in your work efficiency, would you consider it absurd?  I'm thinking of things like having your very own staples instead of walking to the copy room down the hall every time you want to attach 2 pieces of paper to each other, or something in your filing cabinet that holds the files up so you can look through them easily.  Because having proper school supplies makes a similar difference to your child.  
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics