Perfect attendance award

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m a second-grade teacher, in my first year of teaching, and it’s been pretty hard. It’s the first job I’ve ever had where I really struggled at it. But it’s rewarding, of course.

The administration? Not always as supportive as I’d like.

There was the time when I got called to the office to get my school t-shirt, which I am expected to wear every Friday for spirit day. That’s fine. I was also given a two-page letter listing the members of the PTO, in case I wanted to write them thank-you letters for the t-shirt. Uh, yeah, I’ll be writing that letter any day now.

There was the time that I needed a $6.00 piece of equipment for my filing cabinet (I have a lot of hanging file folders, but the edges of the drawers are too low to support the folders; a frame to put them on costs $6). The secretary initially told me that purchasing one was out of the question; when I persisted and asked if I could fill out a requisition form, she told me to email the principal to find out if I could fill out a requisition. GAH! I’m sure we spent at least $20 in total labor before I finally got the principal’s okay to fill out a requisition for a $6 piece of equipment.

There was the time that the only printer available to teachers was out of toner. For four months. (Granted, two of those were over the summer, but two of them weren’t.)

Today, though.

An hour before the end of the day, they announced over the intercom that certain staff members had perfect attendance so far in the school year. Okay, I thought, cool; the Venn diagram lesson can wait. When my name came up, my class of second-graders clapped and cheered for me, and I bowed and strutted a little, clowning around. Then they said we should all come down to the office.

“Yeah, right,” I thought. I had a class full of kids and no assistant to watch them; the office could wait. Twenty minutes later, the intercom came on again, summoning just four of us perfect-attendance people down, apparently unaware that some of us had classes to teach.

Well, we had to go to the computer lab anyway, so I walked the kids past the office and had them wait while I got my fancy little Microsoft Publisher certificate (printed on the school’s only color printer, which is hard as hell to get access to). And I also got an envelope.

It was a gift certificate! Awesome, I thought. When the kids were settled in the computer lab, I opened it up. $20 gift certificate, for instructional supplies. Well, okay, I thought–it ain’t exactly my favorite restaurant, but I can take this to the local supply store and stock up. I looked for the name of the store.

There was no store name. It’s a gift certificate to the office.

Keep in mind that my annual classroom budget is exactly $0. Now, because I have perfect attendance, that’s suddenly been increased to $20. This is $20 worth of supplies that presumably I won’t have to fight the system for, won’t have to argue with the secretary for permission to send an email to the principal for permission to file a requisition for.

WOOHOO!

I’m living the life of Riley! Thanks, administration!

Daniel

2

If those are the worst problems . . .

3

I feel your pain. We once got a memo that teachers using personal electrical devices like “lamps and fans” were eating up the district’s electricity and that such a practice needed to be stopped. So teachers trying to supplement inadequate air and light in their rooms–pretty signifigant when you are trying to teach–were basically told to quit stealing from the taxpayer.

Glad to hear you’ve made it through the first half of the first year–it doesn’t really get that much easier, but you get much, much better at it, and that makes up for a lot. And summer makes up for the rest!

4

God. The one thing I absolutely hate about teaching is the admin.

The school I work at now doesn’t even have a supply of copy paper lying around. I get there early in the mornings (sometimes earlier than the assistants, which is annoying because they’re the ones with the key to the teacher’s office, but what kind of retarded school opens its office 15 minutes before the first class?) and if the copy machine has run out of paper I’m screwed until one of the supervisor people show up. Once I asked them why they didn’t just leave some extra stacks in the copy room. “School policy.” WTF? You think the teachers are going to start smuggling stacks of papers out of the office?

This new school I’m working at actually has a copy room where people make copies for you. :eek:

I wish someone would give a gift certificate for some copy paper.

5

Congratulations?

6

Yeah, we have that too. I look back on the school I student taught at, and remember the closets full of copy paper as the height of luxury.

Muffin, those aren’t the worst problems; they’re just the funny ones. Manda Jo, I definitely am seeing progress in my own competence even over the first half-year: I did not come into the job knowing anything about discipline, and now I know a little bit about it. Everyone who’s seen my class or who knew the kids last year tells me I got an unusually difficult class; it’s been a trial by fire. But hey, at least now my classroom has a budget!

Daniel

7

And you get to start all over next year–that’s one of the best parts–you get to pass your mistakes on and start over!

8

Well, it’s your call, but if it had been me, I would have shelled out the 6 bucks for the file thing, and also paid for the toner.

You have to decide which is more worthwhile, fretting and steaming for months or just paying out of pocket and problem solved. Which is worth more, your stress, or the money?

Yeah, I know we all hate our jobs, and we are not going to put forth one iota of effort, (or money) if the PTB are supposed to foot the bill. It’s the whole “principle” thing, right? You shouldn’t have to do it, it’s not your job, so why go the extra mile? Even if the $30 bucks you may have forked over for file thing and toner might give you some restfull
nights.

In my job, working on airliners, we buy our own tools. We know what we need, and so we buy it, because it makes our lives easier. We don’t write letters and bitch about how we need this or that.

9

Sadly, it’s not just in schools. I was working for a Fortune 400 company, in fact one which is currently listed as number one on the Fortune magazine list of most admired companies. I was a machinist doing close tolerance work.

Those of us in the machine shop asked for additional lighting in the stock area where we would rough cut stock. It wasn’t critical work, but accuracy was important to avoid wasting materials. We asked for more lighting in that area. The company, which by the way makes a large percentage of the lighting used in the world, paid a consultant group a fairly large sum to come in and demonstrate that we, in fact, needed additional lighting.

I was aghast. I asked the company who would have asked for additional lighting if it were not necessary? Did they think we wanted more light for some selfish purpose of our own? The consultant group reported that minimum foot-candles for the work we were doing was 30 foot-candles, and the light available was less than 10 foot-candles.

So we ended up with the lights, but what a bunch of morons. It cost more for the consultants than the lights.

10

How much is a package of 500 8.5 x 11 copy paper? Maybe 5 bucks? Why don’t you just keep one package on hand for emergencies rather than fretting about it?

11

Don’t know if this is true of your secretary, but ours is a total bitch. You have to file a written request for supplies, including things that you might need immediately, like tissues, or pencils. The supply closet is locked, so you need to go through her (unless you know ways around it, which I do now). Then she makes you wait 3-4 days before she gives them to you. WTF?

This woman also ignores you when you need something and makes you stand at her desk while she types on her computer, talks on the phone, chats with her friends, or whatever. Doesn’t even acknowledge your presence. Sometimes this goes on for 5+ minutes. I only have 39 minutes free a day to make copies, grade tests, enter grades, call parents, etc. You have to go through her to see the principal, get clearance on trip forms, reimbursed for expenditures, checked out at the end of the year, etc. Totally unpleasant.

I know people have complained about her, but to no avail. I don’t know what her problem is.

I don’t agree that people should spend money out of their own pockets for supplies that the school should provide. I’m not even going to launch into an argument about it. It’s ridiculous.

12

Tissues or pencils? My God!

At Kroger’s, you can get a 20 pack of pencils and a years supply of tissue for about $2.95.

Oh, but that’s right. Why should you have to pay? Much better to fill out forms, waste time and stress out.

13

In a school you typically are making copies in sets of 100 or more. Funding that yourself could get really expensive.

14

Zambini, you write that as though I haven’t spent hundreds of dollars on my classroom already.

Daniel

15

Because at some point you have to draw a line. Teaching is an endless money sink–I have paid thousands of dollars over the years, paying for everything from AP exams to next-day postage on college applications to team sweatshirts to books to food to bus money to yearbooks . . .I buy a lot of supplies–anything exotic, I just buy–but at some point you have to draw the line and force them to give you the basics you need to do your job, or soon you’ll be expected to chip in to buy the copier and pay the electric bill.

ETA: And what I pay is nothing compared to what elementary teachers end up paying, both because they have to decorate so much more (you must have six activity stations and 4 display boards!) and because they know their kids so well and know their needs so much that they end up, often, donating things like clothes and food and field trip money.

16

I can understand both sides of this, I hate to say.

On the administrations side, you’ve got “office supplies” that probably disappear. I know that after 15 years in the corporate world, I will never have a need for a clipboard or box of pens on my own again.

But at the same time, it’s a teacher trying to do their job. The tools for that should be readily available. Is this the sort of thing that a complaint to the teachers unions could help with?

17

Since I’m not a teacher, I can respond without being accused of greedily not wanting to spend my own money for work. Why should they have to buy supplies for themselves? I don’t have to at work, and I make more than pretty much any teacher (and am contributing less to society.) Teachers in the elementary school near me ask parents to donate tissues for the year. They spend their own money on lots of stuff too.

It’s not the supplies so much as the supplies being a symptom of not giving a crap about public schools. Where I lived in NJ the teachers had supplies, and the kids had an extra period or two a day to actually take science all through Junior High and High School, and gym, and language.

That’s why I vote for every school bond measure that passes my way - and my kids are well past school age.

When I read the OP, I thought LHOD was going to be yelled at for not dropping everything to get his certificate, which shows how cynical I am.

18

I bring cases of office supplies to my kid’s teachers. When my company changed its logo, all of the old stationary, envelopes and pens had to go. My kid’s school got quite the bonanza from that one.

The official school supply list every year includes two reams of copy paper for the classroom, along with purell and tissues. This helps keep the teachers from worrying about that stuff. This is one of those hidden benefits of teaching in a district that is a bit more well off - they can force the parents to pony up and save the tax revenue for other uses.

19

Did you perhaps work for God’s Equivalent?

20

Do you have any idea how many tissues and pencils 100 7th graders go through? It’s not like the number you need for your house. I give out about 20 pencils A DAY, no kidding. If you want to send me a check for those, if it’s really no big deal, I’ll tell you where to send it. Put your money where your mouth is, or shut up.

Yes, why should I have to pay? I shouldn’t, nor should LHOD or Manda JO. I’m sorry, but I need my personal income to spend on my family. Not for supplies used up daily, that I need so that children can get an education. You buy your own tools for your job… do they last awhile and do you get to keep them? Or do you give them away to other people all day long? It’s a bottomless need for things like tissue, pencils, paper, toner, etc. For the amount of school taxes we pay, we should be able to keep teachers in these basic supplies. Stuff I do buy out of my own money-- books, DVDs, a whiteboard, stuff that lasts a long time and will get years of use by lots of kids. Pencils and tissues, nope. Those disappear in days and then I’d have to buy more? Absurd.

It’s not a sound suggestion and you’re making it based on ignorance and pointless contentiousness. Being something of an expert in pointless contentiousness, I get it that you want to mix it up with me, but… I’m not going to agree with you here either, sorry.

The point of my complaint is, we actually HAVE the supplies at my school, but the bitch in the office won’t get off her ass and get them. She is deliberately obstructionist in letting people get the stuff they need (not just supplies). Sometimes office workers are like this, I’ve seen it in other places too. So I should buy my own because she’s on a pathetic little power trip? No way.

The big problem in our school is that the photocopiers keep breaking. There are 3 and at times all of them are broken, and at least one of them is broken most times. It got so bad that the union grieved it. It’s gotten better since then. I do a shitload of copying (20 page packets for 100 kids 5x a year, plus smaller stuff). It’s a PITA. When I worked for private industry, that shit was always working. Sigh.