In the checkout line at Target this weekend I noticed a mother and daughter buying school supplies. The pencils and ruled paper brought back memories. Naturally it made me think of shopping for supplies as a kid. It also reminded of my many friends who teach in lower income communities and spend their own money to buy supplies because their students simply can’t afford “the luxury” of notebooks and erasers.
Recognizing this challenge, many retailers, like Office Depot, offer teachers a discount on school supplies. Programs like eScrip allow you to help the school of your choice while you shop for necessities. Participating merchants, like Safeway and Big O Tires, contribute a percentage of your grocery loyalty cards, credit cards and debit/ATM card purchases. It’s free to sign up, you just need to register the cards you already have, and then enjoy racking up the points when you use them.
A quick call to your local school with an offer of any kind of office supplies — like that drawer full of pens that gets refilled every time you go to a conference — will likely be met with an enthusiastic “Yes, please!” When I was in corporate marketing, I was constantly looking for something to do with reams of perfectly good paper that we didn’t need anymore, like the letterhead of someone who left the company, out-of-date fact sheets that were only printed on one side, and once, 10,000 sheets of practically blank paper with a few lines of text and one embarrassingly misspelled word. My best discovery was a third grade classroom in desperate need of paper for drawings and to use for multiplication table practice. I was glad to ship them all twenty-one boxes, and just hoped that the spelling error wasn’t contagious.
Charity Guide has a helpful list of suggestions for what to donate, like glue sticks and markers, as well as any kind of art supplies. I love the idea of doing a little office cleaning and boxing up unused supplies to drop off at the local school. You get a neat work area and the kids get some useful tools. If you’re doing a really big cleaning, you should check out I Love Schools, a wonderful site that matches teachers with donors and supplies. An amazing and admirable 100 percent of all donations go to the teachers. You can search for a specific school, or find one that has been waiting for the old VCR in your garage. You should check them out even if your garage is pristine — the testimonials are sort of sad but wonderful.
Teachers shouldn’t have to spend their own money on soap and paper towels. Heading out to the mall soon to fill a backpack for the new school year? Consider filling up a second bag for a less lucky child. Just imagine the look on his or her face upon receiving this unexpected windfall. It’s worth more than a hundred bags. Teachers touch all of our lives. Being reminded to support them, either directly or by helping their students, is a lesson worth learning over and over again.
