<p>Engineer, there are a lot of things that i spend money on for my classroom. I should say that I am an elementary art teacher and that entails a lot of “stuff”, in particular because I have a school of nearly 700 students.
I have a budget for supplies (that would be consumables, not equipment, furniture, etc.) That budget is a dollar amount per child, per year. All of the materials that get used up during the school year come from that budget. Because I need so much of that, there is rarely enough left over to buy things like storage bins, portfolios, etc. It is also awkward to buys some stuff as it all has to go out to a school supply company and they don’t usually have some of the “odd” things that I use in class.<br>
The things I buy are sometimes because I run out of money in my budget, but often because it is something that I can’t get through the usual channels and it’s just easier to do it myself. If I need fresh sunflowers for a still life, I buy them. If I need aluminum foil for printmaking, I buy it.
My days are extremely hectic. If having color coded storage bins is going to help keep my kids organized and save me from a complete breakdown, I buy them. Things like soap, hand wipes, kleenex, and paper towels, paper towels, paper towels. The school only provide a very limited amount so I have to beg people to send them in. Beg them. Not because they are unwilling to help but because they have busy lives and forget.</p>
<p>When we do one of our special projects, many kids bring in specific theme based items to use. Some kids can’t afford them. I go buy them if I can.</p>
<p>Yes, some of the stuff is superfluous. Bulletin board stuff, etc. Again, usually in the interest of saving time so that I can attend to more important things than cutting out borders.</p>
<p>Here is why I think it’s a complicated issue. If you, as a citizen or parent, walked into a school classroom you would probably not have any way of knowing what “stuff” was purchased by the school system and what stuff came out of the teacher’s salary. You would see a well equipped classroom and think that the school was providing everything that the children need, when in fact, the teacher had purchased, or spent time soliciting for and accumulating many of the resources that are benefiting your child and helping to deliver a quality educational experience. This distortion (and of course the ratio would vary from teacher to teacher and school to school) contributes, IMO, to the discord between much of the public and the teaching profession. Why would a parent vote yes on a tax increase to fund education when their perception is skewed by misperceptions?</p>
<p>I also feel that the subtle and unspoken expectations that exist in terms of teachers going above and beyond the call of duty (whether it is by buying items for their classroom or in other ways) is a decidedly sexist phenomenon, but is never acknowledged as such. In what other profession would judgements be made based on how much you are willing to “give” to your client? Because the profession is largely female, it is my feeling that teachers are made to feel, early on, that they are less “mothering” or feminine or nurturing, if they are unwilling to keep giving until it hurts. Look at the teachers that you have experience with. How many of them were men? How many of those men would routinely spend out of pocket on supplies, etc? I’m not saying that the men don’t do it but my experience has been that it is much less than the women in the field and the teachers at the secondary levels are less likely to spend out of pocket than those at the elementary level. My opinion is that the teachers at the younger level are encouraged to be more nurturing than those at the upper levels. There are also fewer male teachers at the primary schools. The predominantly female atmosphere is more susceptible to the subtle pressure to mother the students.</p>
<p>It is hard, as a teacher who cares about her students, to reconcile these thoughts and observations with the daily struggle to make everything go smoothly and be affective in the classroom. As a result, I do what I have to do.</p>