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Holiday Gifts for Teachers

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By James M. Lang

My wife teaches kindergarten in a large public school district in Massachusetts, in a school that serves a population mostly made up of minority and low-income students. She regularly comes home exhausted and depressed. Over the dinner table we hear horror stories of 5-year-old children who have matter-of-factly told her about their jailed parents or drug-addicted siblings.

For her to teach in such an environment requires her to face challenges that most of us teaching in colleges and universities will never know. Still, she is well trained and an exceptional teacher, and can do her job well if she has the support she needs -- from her administration, from her students' families, and from the district's coffers.

While she occasionally has the first two of those, she absolutely does not have the last. In her district, the per-child budget for teachers to spend on school supplies for their classroom this year was around $10. Ten dollars. For the entire year.

You may think back fondly on your days as a kindergartner, and remember a wonderland of crayons and markers, coloring pages, paste and scissors, and myriad supplies for arts-and-craft projects. My wife's students will never know such bounty. She was forced to spend most of her supply budget on copy paper -- not that she ever gets to copy much on those blank sheets of paper, since the photocopy machines are perpetually breaking down.

The other day, she wanted glue sticks for her students for a project, and requested them from the principal. There was no money for glue sticks. So she went out and spent her own money to buy six bottles of glue, a cheaper and messier alternative. In some cases, as in that one, she will put together the supplies for an activity by begging, borrowing, or buying the supplies herself. But in a family supported by two teacher's salaries, and five kids of our own to raise, we can afford that last option only on occasion.

The real tragedy lies not with the creative projects she has to skimp on, but in the many she will never even attempt, because neither she nor the school can afford the necessary supplies.

What does all of that have to do with you, teaching in environments in which you have the supplies you need to do your job well, financed by the tuition of students who have chosen to enroll in your classes?

I hope you feel it has something to do with you as a citizen of a country in which we all seem to want good public schools but no one wants to pay for them. But it also has something to do with you as a teacher, since those cash-starved school districts will eventually be depositing their shortchanged charges at our doorsteps. And when they arrive, we will reap what has been sown by our impoverished public schools. Or, worse still, we won't see the products of those schools at all.

If you vote or own property, you should support political candidates who are willing to make hard choices to fund public schools adequately -- even if those choices cost you a few extra dollars a year in property taxes.

If you don't vote, or if you oppose higher taxes, you can still help create a better-prepared student body for those of us in higher education, and a better-educated citizenry in America. Last year, as the holiday season approached, a colleague and friend of our family asked my wife what sort of school supplies she needed for her classroom. My wife rattled off a list. Before my colleague left for her holiday break, she and her husband filled up a laundry basket with school supplies and delivered it to my wife just before Christmas.

That basket of gifts made a substantial contribution to my wife's students in the weeks and months following the winter break. My colleague didn't spend a fortune. Glue sticks, scissors, crayons and markers, paper, cleaning supplies -- for $20, $30, or $50 you can easily fill up shopping bags with much-needed supplies for struggling schools.

Many academics give money to charities at the holidays, and I don't want to dissuade you from donating to your favorite causes. But consider starting a new charitable tradition this year, and offering the gift of supplies to cash-strapped schools near you, or to teachers you know. Imagine the difference we could make if hundreds of thousands of us each took the time and effort to help provide better schooling to the students who will be walking into our classrooms in just a few years.

It's not difficult. If you have children in the public schools, send in a note explaining that you'd like to help out by purchasing some classroom supplies, and ask for a wish list. Get the school's parent-teacher group on board, and have it request lists from all the teachers to circulate to the school's families. If you don't have children in the schools, contact some and ask about their supply needs. Or join with others to donate more substantial items -- to purchase a set of novels for a high-school English classroom, or software for a math course. The tiniest bit of initiative can make a difference.

I should step back here and note that, as a hard-core liberal Democrat, I hate that I am asking you to play a role that belongs to the government. But as much as I would love to sit back smugly with my arms folded and watch in the coming years as we reap the consequences of underfunded public schools, I can't bring myself to do it. We have to help, even if helping means letting government off the hook for the moment.

Next month, in this space, I will return my focus to the college classroom. But for now, in the season that is supposed to be about giving but mostly seems to be about spending and getting, I am asking for your help.

I am asking, first and foremost, on behalf of my wife and her colleagues in strapped public schools across America. But I am also asking for me and you as well, since the more effectively they can do their jobs, the more effectively we will be able to do ours.