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Let’s get back to basics

By DIANE R. CHODAN

OBSERVER Contributor

My granddaughter and I were going through last year’s papers and supplies when I noticed that she threw out a pencil. The problem? The embedded eraser had snapped off. (The solution was the purchase of a small pack of eraser toppers.)

There is an irony inherent in the yellow pencil my granddaughter almost threw away. The lettering says LETS (sic) GET BACK TO BASICS.

Three years ago, I asked my daughter why one grandchild needed 36 pencils for about 36 weeks of school. Last year, my sarcasm broke through when I saw the list for 6th grade included 50 pencils.

“What are you going to do, eat them for breakfast?” I asked.

I had probably used just a few more than 50 pencils during my entire elementary and secondary school career. And this is when we actually practiced the letters for printing and then for cursive writing, and when we had no computers for word processing.

The year of the 50 pencils I began comparing lists of school supplies. The largest request (demand) for pencils belonged to a local public first grade whose teacher wanted 100 pre-sharpened pencils for first grade students. The pre-sharpened I understand. One hundred pencils per child I do not.

When my grandchildren and honorary grandchildren started school, I thought back to my days as both a student and a teacher. I ordered in quantity personalized pencils for each. By watching the sales in the catalogues, I was able to secure them at a low cost. When I ordered them, I was remembering the pencils in my classrooms that were lost or that no one claimed. I thought the personalized pencils would help the children keep track of their things and become more organized.

No, some teachers said. One teacher said the specialized pencils clog the pencil sharpener. I didn’t have that experience as a teacher. Often I bought specialized pencils as gifts for my students and my pencil sharpener never clogged unless it needed emptying.

To many classrooms, every child must bring yellow pencils. Number 2 pencils I understand, but all yellow? As a child, sometimes my family got pencils from a business or organization or political candidate and I used them. I then learned that some teachers put the pencils in a container shared by all children and they want uniformity.

Pencils are not the only problematic items on the school supply lists, and certainly not the most expensive. Notebooks and folders on these lists often have to be of a specific type and color.

I know I grew up in different times. These school lists did not exist — not when I was a child and not when I taught. Some products, such as hand sanitizer, containers of wipes, markers, dry erase markers and calculators did not exist either. Back in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s the majority of the items needed for school, such as writing paper and paste, were supplied by the schools. Students could come to school with either crayons or colored pencils. We kept them from year to year and when they were broken or short, we used them at home.

I began speaking to my friends, to parents, and to retired educators. Many thought that things had gotten out of hand but were afraid to speak up lest they be considered troublemakers. My longtime friend Pat Lazarczyk, a retired teacher from the Silver Creek district, and I have had a number of conversations about school supplies over the past few years. She brought up points I had not considered.

This year I wanted to write about school supply lists, but I too was reluctant. She told me sure I would be criticized but really I had nothing to lose. When I asked her if I could quote her, she said “Go ahead, use my name.”

Pat genuinely loved teaching and she had empathy for those kids (and their parents) who struggled economically and/or academically. She said, “If people could afford $200-$400 of supplies perhaps they would be able to send their children to private schools. All of these parents have also paid school taxes.”

We talked about some of the items. She pointed out that hand sanitizer often contains the warning, “keep out of the reach of children.” I looked and she was correct. Furthermore the bottles did not specify age of the children. Pat taught second grade during most of her career, so she was wise to be cautious.

We talked about “wipes.” I used them many times to clean when I had an office at the OBSERVER. They worked well on ink from newspapers but I noticed if I got into a cleaning frenzy, my hands were affected. The same happened to other staff members who would use them. I hope the children are not using these products.

Pat’s no nonsense practicality made me laugh. She didn’t need wipes. When the desks were getting dirty, she would buy a can of shaving cream. “I let the kids practice writing their spelling lists (with their fingers) in the shaving cream. Then we used brown paper towels the school supplied and cleaned off the desks. The room smelled good too,” she said.

To Pat, it doesn’t matter what color folders or notebooks are; they can be labeled. Pat asked for a composition notebook with wide ruling since her students were young. “If the child really wanted purple, let him have purple,” she laughed.

Since she wrote a newsletter to her parents periodically, Pat would just add a short personalized note on the newsletter meant for the parents of a child who needed a new pencil.

A number of people to whom I spoke hated spiral notebooks. Greg Bacon, managing editor of the OBSERVER who writes with his left hand, said they are difficult for him. Others, including myself, found the wire on the notebook eventually unraveled and caught on clothes, especially sweaters. My teachers never specifically required spiral notebooks as the lists of today do and after one disastrous year, I generally used a loose leaf notebook with dividers for the subjects. When I made a mistake, I could easily remove a page, unlike in composition notebooks that are sewn.

The way we bought and used school supplies encouraged frugality and minimized waste. Items such as pencil boxes and crayons could be used from year to year. On the lists, I noticed even within the same school and similar grade levels, one teacher wanted a plastic pencil box, while another wanted a different kind.

Recently, I noticed a family that was looking worn out and discouraged searching for school items in a discount dollar store. The parents were purchasing quite a lot for their two school aged children and anxiously wondering about whether the color was correct on one item ,whether another was the item the teacher really wanted and whether they could afford all these things.

I would urge the schools to look at these lists and see if all these supplies are necessary, whether all the items are safe, whether some of the supplies can be supplied by the schools and whether they can, as written on the pencil, get back to basics.

As for the incorrect spelling of let’s on the pencil, that is a commentary for another day.

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