Mindful Back to School Shopping
Budgeting Armor For Teachers
According to a recent poll of teachers conducted by Adopt a Classroom, teachers individually spend an average of $750 over the course of a school year. Collectively that’s billions of dollars being spent in service of students.
Over the recent years, I’ve done more grade level switches than I ever thought I could handle. Moreover, I went from 2nd to 3rd, then K to 1st all within four years. With each grade level adjustment, new things were “necessary” to start the year off right. Asking friends, families, and students’ families for donations are great, however, I won’t be sharing crowdfunding strategies or grant-writing tips for your classroom. The reality is that we teachers are going to spend some of our money with or without the support of our school’s budget, grants, and contributions. With that said, here are some things that I’ve learned to do to keep my urge to spend in the realm of reality.
- Consumables — take an inventory and ask.
Instead of reusing last year’s supply list, my co-teacher and I took a hard and calculated look at our supply closet and readjusted our supply list request for the upcoming school year.
We noted the types of consumables that we had in an abundance, versus the items we had run out of, for example: folders, dry erasers, pencils, and erasers which were nowhere to be found in our classroom closet. We also had an “abundance” of some items and we adjusted the amounts needed, so…
