I was just wondering if any other teachers were in the same boat. I am allocated with $125 Australian dollars per year to buy all my teaching supplies. This includes chalk, charts, bulletin board paper, paints and class art supplies, stickers, sticky tape, and general stationary. If you have ever seen the price of things in teacher supply catalogs, you’ll know that that money doesn’t go very far. A basic bottle of paint costs around $20. If I was to buy JUST paint, I could only buy between 5 and 6 bottles per year. Then I would be chalkless! - I could PAINT on the black board? I am also on a very limited photo copying allocation which amounts to 4 pages per child per week. That’s not a lot when you consider notes going home, homework, bookelts, award certificates and general work sheets. I am often at a copy place on the week-end spending between $10 and $20 dollars just to cover me for the week. My room has only basic furniture. I don’t have a book display – my reading books for the students are in tubs (I bought). They have to put their school bags on a shelf that is supposed to be used for storage. My stored items are in my spare room at home because there is no storage in my classroom. I teach in a town where the weather is so hot in the summer that the government allows children to take days off due to the heat but will not air-condition the rooms! What are your comments? I would be interested to hear your opinions. Thanks
