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An eligible educator can deduct up to $300 of any unreimbursed business expenses for classroom materials, such as books, supplies, computers (including related software and services) or other equipment that the eligible educator uses in the classroom. Supplies for courses on health and physical education qualify only if they are related to athletics.
Don’t business people get to write off lunches and shit if they are “business related”?
And just find me a teacher that spends last than $300 to kit out their classroom. I think the pizza party I threw cost more than that.
It is insane to me that the teachers have to pay for any of it.
My wife is a teacher. About 2k per year of our own money goes to fund basic supplies in her classroom.
By basic I literally mean pens, paper, soap, folders, erasers, backpacks.
We also keep a little food stocked in her classroom for kids with blood sugar and nutritional issues, since it's a very poor income district, but I wasn't including that when I last did her expenses since it comes straight from our grocery budget.
That's fucking nuts.
Yeah dude. Be nice to teachers because they literally bleed for their students. ( Most of them)
I bought my own baking soda and vinegar for my chemistry classes. And glow sticks, and candy, and glassware, and scales…
Crazy.
It taught me to recognize the value in a lot of trash and turned me into the Greek God of thrifting. I can turn a balloon, solo cup and some rubber bands into a “vortex cannon.” “Let’s just walk outside and draw pictures of bugs” is one of my favorite “lessons.” I’d keep free samples/supplies given out at teacher conferences - if I could get 5 or 6 different things, it worked well as “stations.”
The poverty part I honestly can deal with. I’d be back in a heartbeat if it was possible.
Is that per year?
Considering what I heard how underequipped most schools over there are, it doesn't sound like much.
Yes, per year.
Ever see the drama over parents being asked to send extra school supplies/communal school supplies? That’s because we have to provide them, and if we aren’t asking parents for them, it comes out of our own money.
It’s crushing to have a broke kid ask you for a pencil, then look you straight in the eye while breaking it and then asking for a new one. $300/month was more accurate, on my $2200 monthly take home pay.
I work with kids in Northern Europe and I don't even know how to relate to this.
My pay is shitty (I'm not an actual teacher) and I never made it a secret that I'm not paying for anything myself. I buy, collect receipts, and get the money back from my employer with my paycheck. And I collect all the receipts. This has never been a problem, but some coworkers seem to feel morally superior because they buy it from their own money and just wave it off, kinda. I find that baffling. It has nothing to do with having actual dedication to your job.
The situation is very different from yours I guess.
They will guilt you if you don’t spend your own money. Teaching in the US is a huge guilt trip.
My district had a huge chronic absenteeism problem - children just vanished. My class sizes were bigger than I had room to fit (like 33 enrolled in a chemistry lab room with 6 of those tall lab tables that are meant for 4). The only way they all fit was that I’d be guaranteed to be missing about a fifth of my students on any given day.
The districts solution to the absenteeism problem was to guilt trip teachers - that if only you smiled at the kids more, if only you would greet them at the door, then the fact that the buses aren’t running and their dad went to jail last night wouldn’t keep them from attending school!
Well at least they didn't send you out to look for the kids!
While materially things are better at my school, the emotional aspect of it sounds familiar. Nevertheless, your bosses do the guilt tripping? I would think it's typically the parents, sometimes better-than-thou coworkers.
I'm beginning to think that working at a school, the days you go home with a knot in your stomach and a lump in your throat will always outweigh those when you feel things went well and you're appreciated.
I used to work in a kindergarten before that and never realized how much I appreciated the smaller and tighter, more exclusive environment. I know how to deal with kids that age. We spend the whole day together. They might be mean, too, but never as mean as a school kid can be, and I just know my way around their emotions, usually.
In school, they are under so many people's responsibility during one day, no wonder they start rebelling.
No wonder schools are such a horror trip to go through. This whole zhread adds some context to what the headmaster of the school I attended was raging about back then. He was probably the nicest guy you can think of and desperately tried to procure more funding. In the end it was at least enough for one full-time job for some kind of social worker/children's psychologist (assumably badly paid), but once you could hear him scream probably all throughout the school, assumably during some talk with state officials. He really tried.
Didn't change shit though. During my time a seventh grader was expelled after selling cocaine (confirmed by police) and all teachers were too overworked to care about the daily violence. One kid apparently tried to off himself. It was a bigger school sharing facilities with a primary school as well, so obviously the youngest regular smoker was in second grade. It was a complete nightmare. The only reason there wasn't at least one shooting was because this took place in Germany, not the US. Of course teachers weren't exactly supported either; it increasingly became more common to just fire them just before summer holidays, to then get them back 6 weeks later.
Stopped being angry at (most of) the teachers from back then years ago. Though it took me well over a decade of therapy to finally be able to sleep without nightmares of having to go to school again. I pity everyone who has to suffer in these torture facilities.
I have to admit I agree with everything you wrote. This was my school time as well.
The one I work at now is much smaller (120 kids max) and has a relatively high educator-to-kid ratio (more than 1 to 10, but not all work full time), but there's something inherently counterproductive in the system itself: the division into classes by age, the idea that older is better, but then mixing all these kids up again. Not all kids are bound to do stupid shit, but most kids are bound to look up to those slightly older ones, and most of those take advantage of that... and that's all before puberty hits. Take that into the mix - 💣