I'm a member of the 5th grade mail ring
where we are currently having a very
interesting discussion about school
supplies. It seems that some districts
expect teachers to pay for copies, while
other districts provide every supply for
every student.

I'm going to be a first year teacher in
GA. The larger (ie: STATE) administrators
have been pushing for higher standardized
test scores for the past several years.
Some districts have changed their entire
curriculum to focus on the yearly
standardized test scores. I, like many
teachers, do not agree with this practice.
Now that this concern about school supplies
has been raised, I truly see a
contradiction in the goals of our education
system. Do we really want our students to
succeed on standardized tests? Why, then,
do we charge teachers, who are not getting
paid enough as it is, for each copy they
make for their students? This feels like a
knife in the back! How are we to be
effective if we have to account for every
single copy we make? How can we be
effective if our supplies are limited
by the very people that demand more from us
as teachers? Some of our students have
nothing: they come from homes where they
sleep on the floor and do not have running
water. Their parents are far more
concerned with keeping the roof over their
families heads than getting them school
supplies. Yet, we are to teach them every
thing they need to know about bubbling in a
test and pay for all the supplies to do
that???

Natalie/GA/5th

Natalie, natalieburdette@hotmail.com,
7/21/00