That is my experience as well–it does slow down the rest of the year. I also use mine to clean my overhead transparencies. There is also the serious student sobbing meltdown, which happens once a month or so and can be good for as much as a quarter of a box.
Also, kids will steal boxes to carry to rooms where they don’t have kleenex.
Don’t feed the troll.
But everything you and the fine teachers in this thread wrote is correct. As a Programmer/Analyst with 15 years experience, office supplies have always been supplied by the office. If I need a cell phone for work, work supplies the cell phone. In fact, I will regreatfully, be getting a blackberry soon. I don’t even carry my cell phone, now I will have to carry something larger.
Jim
A friend of mine periodically contemplates teaching as a second career due, in part, to the “easy hours” and “summers off”. :rolleyes:
I keep warning her that teaching K-12 is a bitch of a job, and that these things are at best mirages. There’s a reason for the legendary 5-year burnout rates. Being harassed over $6 widgets and personal fans when money is lavished on the athletics programs, and when the superintendent salary is ~$175,000+ grrrrrrrrrrrrr.
I teach adjunct at a university, and have always bought my own gear. At my day job, I buy my own gear - happy chair, wireless trackball, wireless, ergonomic keyboards, Seagate portable drives, …
If you want the right gear, you’ll generally have to buy your own. What’s really funny is that in some environments, you’ll get blow back for buying your own gear - they’d rather you stay within the system and suffer. Compliance over Competence, Uniformity over Excellence.
And now I really want to go number all the Kleenex boxes in my room.
Daniel-
If you need another file cabinet frame or anything else of similar nature, don’t hesitate to PM me. You’ve got a lot of goodwill built up here. Where I work has a lot of surplus crap and free shipping.
That’s very kind–thank you!
Daniel
I pay for stuff all the time, especially if it is a lot easier to do so than going through administrative channels. Keep the receipts and deduct it as a business expense (assuming you itemize.)
PS Looking at last year’s tax return, I spent over $500 of my own money on school-related supplies. :eek:
I’d rather they use the tissues than the alternatives. You cannot believe how often I hear the sound of some kid sucking the snot back into his nose, which induces nausea in me. And those are the ones that bother to suck it back in. I have a great squick towards snot, moreso than blood, and I have literally seen it fly more often than I care to in this life already, and I have at least 20 years to go. This is why I get 2 mandatory horrendous colds a year no matter what I do. The fucking mucous is ambient, everywhere, on every surface. They actually do in-service meetings on how to minimize the amount of student mucuous you interact with (I’m being only slightly hyperbolic). Thus, IMO, there cannot be enough tissues in the room.
I can do better than that at Safeway, let alone Costco. But your point stand - tissues are expensive, especially for 20 or 30 kids for a whole term.
I’ve already mentioned that work pays for my stuff, except small things that I prefer to buy myself. I’m damn grateful to teachers who worker harder for less money and less respect than I do.
I couldn’t find a better price than what I listed unless you went up to really large amounts (which makes the point moot anyway, Zambini is arguing that he could buy a year’s worth of tissue AND a 20 pack of pencils for $2.95.)
If you buy 3,420 tissues from Costco then on a per-unit basis it would be ~9.52 for 570 of them.
Anyway, the absolute lowest prices I’ve been able to find are all slightly above 1 cent per tissue–and that means Kroger is either selling tissues for under one cent or you’re going to have to make 295 tissues last a classroom an entire year.
Without meaning to support the troll’s arguments, I’d like to point out that if you go with no-name, or store brand, tissues you can get retail tissues at significantly less than a penny a sheet. The local supermarket’s store brand retails for a box at $0.88, which then has 160 2-ply sheets. So, I can beat your price.
But still nowhere near matching the troll’s ahem economy. I still only get about 540 tissues for that 2.95. A bit better than your price, but still far from being enough for a classroom of students.
I think I’ve realised a hidden benefit to the our typical school uniforms: even the least self-aware and most grotty kids work out that the sleeves are perfect for nose-wiping. Seriously.
(I’m glad I’ve been mostly in high schools since the summer - not only is it far less exhausting, I’ve also managed to stay bug-free for five months!)
I think you’re missing the point of zamboni57’s post. He states first that like LHOD, his employer also makes him eat shit. Where they disagree is that zamboni57 says it tastes good.
That’s quite an eloquent way to put it :D.
I hadn’t really noticed in his first post how he suggests that I’d rather bitch than put in one iota of effort. Talk about douchebag’s advocate! Around Halloween I stopped putting in 60-70 hour workweeks; these days I’m down to a little over 50 hour workweeks for the most part, sometimes even leaving before I’ve done 10 hours of work in a day (of course, I work over the weekend as well).
I know plenty of folks work longer hours than me, and my hours aren’t why I posted in the Pit. I didn’t post in the Pit because my annual budget was $0. I didn’t post in the pit because of the file frame. If I hadn’t been acknowledged for perfect attendance, I certainly wouldn’t have complained; I wouldn’t have noticed. If I’d just gotten the frameable certificate, I would’ve laughed at the idea I’d frame such a booby prize, but wouldn’t have posted. If I’d gotten a 99-cent Payday candy bar for my troubles, I would’ve been touched and pleased, albeit in a very minor way.
I posted because my reward for dedication to my job appears to be receiving a tiny portion of the tools I need to do my job. It’s hard not to feel insulted by that. Laughing about it helps.
Daniel
I’m a little confused about something here. Teachers (or school systems) are required to supply pencils and tissues?
I remember that as a student, I had to bring in those things for myself. There was a special day from Hell every year in late August, called Back to School Shopping. We spent a small fortune on pencils, pencil sharpeners, pens, notebooks, paper, protractors, contractors, farmtractors… Whatever.
The only pencils I remember schools supplying were those really fat ones we used in first grade.
I think this led to my apparent misunderstanding of what’s going on in schools today.
I can’t recall a single instance when I was in school that I needed a tissue or pencil from the teacher. Rarely did classmates request them either. You provided your own and if didn’t have it you borrowed from a classmate. Asking the teacher for those things would result in anger, annoyance and a warning that you better be prepared for class next time or don’t bother attending.
The sheer amount of tissue required is mind-boggling. If I were a teacher, I maybe would have a few extra pencils to lend out in emergencies, but I would definitely ask that they be returned. As for tissue, I would have one box handy and if they got used up, I wouldn’t get any more until the following month.
Eventually, the students would get the idea.
I once had a teacher scold me for bringing my own tissues on the first day. She told the class that tissues were a bad idea, as one bad blow and you’d burst the eardrums right out of your head.
I do have to wonder where art teachers got their supplies. We weren’t expected to bring in our own India ink.
Do you really want to deny a kid with snot running out of his nose a tissue? I’m so glad that they want to use tissue instead of wiping boogers on the desk, blowing snot everywhere, and audibly swallowing it. Providing tissue is the least of the evils in this situation, and certainly the most sanitary. Don’t forget that the mucous is full of germs, which I’d rather have in a tissue in the trash than pretty much anywhere else it would wind up. Denying this would be cutting off the snot-filled nose to spite the face.
Ditto pencils. Do I want the kid to do his work, or do I want to fight about who should provide the pencil? If I give him the pencil, that’s one less excuse for him not to do work.
I always had to take my own supplies, and refurbish as necessary. I’ve always purchased supplies for my kids, and I think it was about 15 years ago that the teachers began requesting each student bring in three boxes of tissues, too. But my understanding of the problem is that, as students run out of their supplies, they often look to the school to hand them out. In addition to all of this, this past year, I got a letter from the school (about two weeks before school started) stating that the supply list was only a recommendation, and because my daughter attends a Title I school district (low-income; about 85% of the school receives free/reduced cost meals), if I could not or did not want to send her things in, the school would supply them. Now, I don’t know what the school’s budget is for this, but I realize a lot of teachers (horribly underpaid, imho) end up forking out the dough themselves. So not only did I send in my daughter’s supplies, but sent in extra, ear-marked for the class room. I also pick up extras whenever I see them on sale, and send them in to the class room for general usage.
It’s absolutely horrifying that we expect so much of teachers, with so little pay, and then on top of that, expect them to do their job without the proper supplies. 
By law, students have to be provided with the necessary supplies if they don’t have them. This was initially to prevent the poor from being discriminated against in education, but today you have families that just don’t feel like buying supplies for their kids. They expect, and the law requires, that the school provide them.