Quick and easy solution: buy a few boxes of golf pencils. If you come without that's what you use, no waste of instructional time.

Hand sanitizer, that is not necessary. Your kids are trying to avoid work.

Teacher here: OP, you can't do anything about what the kids do or don't have from home. Maybe you have some poor students. Maybe they are teenagers and all consumed with teen angst and can't remember their pencil. Maybe their parents leave early for work and never see the kid leave the house. Maybe the kid has undiagnosed ADD. Who the hell knows?

Things you can do: Tape huge flowers to your pens - that will remind them to return them. Or, let them borrow a pen if they give you a shoe - again, will definitely get them back. Stop letting them try to borrow stuff from others - you are wasting their time and your time. Eliminate the reward for forgetting a pen (extra time spent off task) and maybe you will stop seeing so much of it.

Give them a zero for the day if they come unprepared to class. They will come prepared after this happens once or twice.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, OP, enforce consequences.
No stravaiging around the classroom chatting and borrowing stuff off each other.
Organize a pop quiz at the beginning of class. No pencils? Too bad - 0. One round of that and they will remember. Of course, you'll have apoplectic parents to deal with as well

Not the op, but I am a teacher. Although this seems llike a great idea, as it is a logical consequence, this would never fly in a public school. We, the teachers, are not allowed to give grades like that. Grades are supposed to reflect student knowledge, regardless of effort, or behavior, or organization. The professor from college makes a good point, but again, if I took that advice, I would be the one in trouble with the administration for not doing everything in my power to ensure that students in my class succeed (Even though it may mean enabling them now resulting in less success in the long-term).

Re the student v. parent responsibility: my mom teaches middle school and gripes about how few parents contact her when their kids get a D or F on their report card.

But, I agree with the professor, maybe it's time to stop enabling these kids. Surely, their boss isn't going to take time out of her day to get them a pencil before the meeting.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids in this country, especially, in public schools, have no disciplines. They steal things (= "borrow" but never return them) from their peers and get no punishment. Elementary schools are not so bad, but middle schools, high schools AND colleges.. Most have little sense of ethics. So sad.

~ Someone who was born and raised in a country with a high degree of civility and ethics.

I didn't know trolls had a country.

Yep. He who is in hell knows not what heaven is.

Anonymous wrote:Kids in this country, especially, in public schools, have no disciplines. They steal things (= "borrow" but never return them) from their peers and get no punishment. Elementary schools are not so bad, but middle schools, high schools AND colleges.. Most have little sense of ethics. So sad.

~ Someone who was born and raised in a country with a high degree of civility and ethics.

I didn't know trolls had a country.

OP, when I was in 10th grade my science teacher told us the first day of school that he had a limited amount of supplies we could borrow, but as a downpayment, we needed to give him one of our shoes.

We always remembered to return the pen.