To be really pissed off about constantly having to replace stuff?

[Opalsandemeralds]

Black pens. Purple pens. Whiteboard markers. Rulers. Glue. Pencils. I am a teacher.

I’m fucking sick of it (grouchy rant) and while I’m no Boris fan, it’s been like this since I started teaching so it isn’t a political rant, it’s kids being dickheads rant. For some reason it’s really got to me today.

I should add I teach Year 5 so never ask them to bring their own things. Just be careful with what I give them and pick things off the floor rather than expecting me to do it.

I’ve also started pulling a face and making tut noises as I go past or if with someone make a show of pointing. It’s another social thing women are supposed to be ignore when reality it’s really on edges of aggressive/sexual behaviour. Just because it’s been norm for society doesn’t mean we shouldn’t challenge it.

@Opalsandemeralds

What am I supposed to do?

If you are lending out pens you should ask the student to swap their shoe, bag, coat, etc for the pen so you get it back at the end

But if its a purple pen for peer marking so you have to supply 30 34869067 then maybe have a little discussion with your classes about how the pens come from money from your pocket and if they carry on you'll bring in the fbi, pen watch department.

Only joking, honestly op, I don't know. Maybe number the pens and the chairs so you have a record of who is breaking them/ losing them over and over.

Me and my friends got told off for taking the blank, rectangular stickers once, to give ourselves silly be tags. We thought they were fair game as its school property. The teacher told us she had to buy them herself and we were shocked and ashamed that we had taken from the teacher not just a person.

Sorry totally wrong thread! No idea how did that please ignore

@SunshineCake1

Maybe try explaining to the kids how to use things correctly and put them back where they belong.

Yes, because children of secondary school age do not understand this concept as none of them have parents or prior experience of education. It's the job of their year 9 history teacher to explain this to them at the age of 14.

@LolaSmiles

YANBU

I remember once a student said something like "it's only a 10p pen, chill out" and I thought that summed it up. They genuinely couldn't see why them breaking pens or not looking after resources might be a problem. They seemed to have no regard for other people's property or having a duty ro look after equipment for other students to use.

Then it dawned on me. Some adults in life have no concept of responsibility or looking after things unless it's their money. It's hardly surprising that some students also have those views too.

Do they teach budgeting skills in school?

Ugh. I had momentarily forgotten all about these arduous tasks involving equipment. I'm a teacher, nearing end of maternity leave.

Actually don't swap shoes or blazers. just thinking back to holes in my socks and no deodorant.
I really think numbering the chairs so you give Bobby in seat 15 the number 15 pen and then keep a little book of which seat is given a pen every time. or broken etc.
same with gluesticks.

I guess, and I say this as the mother of a teenager, that a group of teenagers turns into a pack almost. And I'm sure that not having the correct equipment is seen by some as a delaying tactic.

I'm lucky in that dd is a bit of a pen freak (can't think where she gets that from!) so wouldn't want to borrow a pen from anyone in case it's not up to her standards!

But, I do think it's completely wrong that you're having to replace equipment yourself. I'd definitely ask friends and/or of Facebook. If you're near me, then I have loads you could have as I get given lots of promotional items.

@Duracellbunnywannabe

One of my colleagues bought some pink sparkly I love Jesus pen, they were always returned.

I tried this (well not the Jesus bit) and they were pinched even quicker - badge (well, pen) of honour.

I work in early years and feel exactly the same. Kids have no respect for any of our equipment (much that has been bought with our own money as we are supposed to tailor learning experiences to the child’s current interest which could be anything under the sun!)

Kids will jump all over the resources and break them, take them outside and leave them in the rain, put them in their pockets and pens etc last two minutes as they hammer them into their paper. You just have to look away for one second.

We also don’t have petty cash and have to buy snack top ups out of our own pocket as we are only allowed one delivery a week and unfortunately most kids come without having had any breakfast. It’s awful in more than one way. My sympathies

Wowzers!!! You can tell who hasn’t seen the inside of a classroom since they left school.

OP I hear ya!!! I think the only solution is to rant (to like minded people) once in a while then go back to forking out. I don’t see any change in the horizon sadly, either through funding or a shift in social norms. Just remember you are doing a great job and those kids need you and a mgic wand to fix things

YANBU. My mum was a secondary maths teacher.
She sold them - at the time a pack of 20 was about 50p but she sold them for 10p.
Funny how much better organised everyone was in her lesson.

I have not worked in secondary for about 7 years now but I never found a solution to this in the school I worked in for over 20 years. It gradually got worse as the years progressed.

Not allowed to take a shoe in return for a pen - fire hazard if there was a fire alarm (in any case I didn't fancy sharing a classroom with shoeless teenagers, and I included my own DS in that.) They honestly couldn't care less about ties etc and would point blank refuse to hand other stuff over. Once a colleague took a phone and the pupil sneaked it back and then accused her of stealing it.

Counting in and out was too time consuming and when I did try, they just outright lied that they had returned it or Johnny had taken it - or whatever.

Labelling didn't work because they would just set their minds to how to remove the labels and nick the pen, or would even take the pen with the label because they really gave zero shits.

Just refusing to lend equipment - Well I can't write then I can't do any work, I'll just sit here and disrupt and if you complain I'll just say all I needed was a pen.

Detentions - two camps here, parents who were mystified why their child didn't have a pen when they had checked their bag this morning and they had several (little buggers couldn't be bothered getting stuff out of their bag), or parents who refused to let their child do a detention for something as trivial as not having a pen. In any case, that was a detention I had to do too - and chase up.

After 20+ years of this I considered pens collateral damage and thought that even if they did steal them, if we were lucky it just meant that they had a pen for their next lesson. What was really depressing was to find the pens snapped in half (on purpose) and trodden into the carpet at the end of the lesson - and getting criticised by my line manager because the cleaner had complained.

Do I miss those days? Hmm ...?

I still have a bag of pound shop pens though - you never know.

Sorry - x post - not allowed to sell them either, although I did sell some in form time.

I wonder how many people suggesting that various forms of discipline and management is the answer, also have children who have managed to break Christmas toys before the end of the day.

There are numbers of children in many classrooms who will attempt to derail a lesson in whatever way they can. Having no equipment is an easy one. As a teacher, you either debate the issue and insist they provide themselves with equipment, or you loan it. In an ideal world, the loan would be returned. We don’t live in an ideal world.

There are some children who go to school without food, let alone a bag of equipment. The responsibility for that sits squarely with the parents. There are some children who are so entitled that they simply don’t recognise their responsibility to organise themselves. The responsibility for that sits squarely with the person.

Children learn from their parents. For good or bad.

I’m a teacher .
I would get so upset when the office would ask me to justify why I required more glue sticks!!! Well for Math we had 32 children who were required to stick in at least & sheets a day ! So 32 glue sticks were never going to last a year !!!! I haven’t even mentioned all the other subjects which the glue sticks were required !!!!!!
Pens ! They run out - children leave the kids off , they are stolen and lost ! Yet we were only allowed one pack of 50 for the whole year !
I would have to beg for supplies. Endlessly! An utter joke !

My darling friend one day was told by the office she was not allowed any more pens ! So on the third day of asking she downed tools and her class did no work in their books ! When the deputy head walked in with a governor and saw this he hit the roof !!!! He marched to the office and demanded pens and a set of stationary for the class which arrived within 10 minutes ( not the usual 10 days !)

I ended up spending my own money on pencils , glue sticks and pens ! Crazy !!!!

Oh to be a teacher !

A lot of these suggestions assume children want a pen, but don’t have one for a genuine reason. And sure, that does sometimes happen (anyone can forget a pen once) but they return them.

Demand a shoe / phone / tie? And then they refuse. No miss, you’re not having my shoe. What then? They don’t get a pen? Errr.

Charge money? No chance. I’m not giving you 10p! (Plus, a lot won’t have money now - cashless system.)

Train them to put pens back ?

Give them detentions? Maybe but then you still have to keep track of who borrowed what, which is really not easy to do as the lesson starts.

Excuse my typos - I just gave birth and am making a mess of my grammar !

@R0tational

Yabu.

What's unreasonable about expecting pupils to have some bloody respect?

We talk about recycling and saving the environment but each day I would print over 100 pages of questions.
To then be cut out and then put into piles to be stuck onto more paper in the children’s books ( using thousands of glue sticks in the process !)
Utterly ridiculous- when we are meant to be so technologically advanced !

Imagine if we didn’t have scratchy expensive uniform and instead asked parents to spend half the amount on school supplies including textbooks and stationery. I honestly believe it would transform the education system.

@Opalsandemeralds, I'm with you, people suggesting these things have either never been in charge of a class of teenagers OR work in a school with frankly amazing behaviour or SLT support.

I teach in a college. If someone asks for a pen I lend them a crappy one or I don't have one to lend and they have to ask someone in the class. A colleague went through a phase of going into the office and getting the box of new pens and dishing them out...surprise, surprise, they were all gone within a couple of weeks. Whereas nobody wants to keep the horrible ones I hand out (and I ask for them back because it's 1 or 2 students and easy to keep track of, AND the students are far less likely to have destroyed them in the time). You could get through a box in a day in secondary. If you wanted to enforce sanctions or count them in and out etc you could spend half a lesson doing it with some classes. No exaggeration.

@Pinkpantslady

Excuse my typos - I just gave birth and am making a mess of my grammar !

Congratulations!

Pinkflask
When I worked in a difficult school I had 2 colleagues who did some of the things suggested on this thread and it worked for them. It didn't didn't for everyone, and they'd not be my strategies of choice, but they'd established themselves, built a reputation and it worked for them, just like the strategies I tried worked for me.

The problem with the equipment issue is that it easily becomes an endless moaning game.
Suggestion A = don't be silly
Suggestion B worked for me = have you even worked in a school?
Suggestion C = how am I meant to keep track on what equipment I've leant out?
Suggestion D = do you think I have time to issue detentions and they probably wouldn't attend anyway, and then I'd have more work chasing it
Suggestion E is something I've seen people use = that would never work
Suggestion F = must only work in a brilliant school

So what you get is a classic staffroom moaning echo chamber that boils down to" we are fed up of equipment issues but don't really want to do anything about it.