I have officially entered my 11th year in public education. I’m no longer in the classroom and have finally found the job that I want to retire in. Of course, I would love to retire early and write full time, but until that happens I will be in education.
This brings me to the point of the post. I found this guy (pictured below) while re-organizing my desk. I bought this at Micheals a few years ago and kept it in my room when the classroom pencil sharpeners failed. Faber-Castell never failed to sharpen any brand of pencils that students brought in so I highly recommend getting one and keeping it in your desk.
My other point for this post is to give a teacher tip. Supplies for teachers are not easy to come by and most often are bought by the teacher. I’ve only worked at one school that offered a supply of pencils for teachers to give to the students. The supply was usually gone a week after filling so pencils were always hard to come by.
One of the things I started prior to working for that school was class pencil donations. I would give extra credit to those who were able to donate classroom pencils. My thought was if you were willing to help the class out then I’m willing to help you out. I never told the students how much the extra credit was but I would say it was worth it. I also didn’t collect the pencils at the of class either because I felt that if a student needed them in my class then they were going to need them in another.
D. W. Saur 