When my three sons were little this was my least favorite time of the year. School supply time. I bought the basics all summer for awhile, but then I had to stop because the lists became so specific that I was wasting my money. Back then we didn’t get the lists until right before school started, when you pre registered your kids.
So, a week or two before school I was frantically trying to find specific brands of pencils, pens, notebooks, binders, glues, folders (and those had to be specific colors too), crayons, dictionaries, calculators, and on and on. Sometimes teachers had items on the list not even made by manufacturers listed.
And I, who learned how to prove theorems and construct pentagrams and calculate sines, cosines, and tangents all without ever owning a calculator by the time I graduated high school, I resented those calculators. I knew then that they weren’t aids that helped my young sons think and learn, at that age they were crutches.
No one will ever convince me otherwise. I needed calculators in college level math and physics. I was so much better off without them in school. Believe it or not, when I took my first trigonometry class at college level, the instructor would not allow us to use calculators on an exam, and I was fine with that. When I sat down to take those exams, because I understood triangles, sines, cosines, and tangents, I could remember and use any formula I needed myself, specific to each problem.
When I took chemistry in college there was even a calculator for that. I was the only one in the class who didn’t have one, because I couldn’t afford it and the tuition too. My kids were in high school then, and on the way to school one of my sons drilled me on the elements, and on the formulas and basics I had to know. I was the only one in that class to get an A, and the next year when my son took chemistry in high school he easily made an A as well.
Calculators are useful, but we have allowed them and computers to become crutches, and critical thinking skills have suffered. I learned to problem solve from math classes, a skill that has served me well in all areas of my life. Could it be possible that some of the problems our children have with anxiety these days is partially caused by the fact that we no longer teach them the tools to cope with life, as well as solve an Algebra problem?
The ability to think logically and analytically is a crucial skill, and we need it. Maybe we have a bunch of young adults running around feeling threatened by actual free and different thought and expression and opinions because they only know how to emote, not really think deeply.
So, one of my two main pet peeves with the schools, and teaching, was ridiculous school supply lists, and the second was projects. I still believe that some of the stupid, expensive projects kids have to make are just excuses for teachers not to teach while kids construct fake nuclear devices out of the $200 worth of materials I had to find back in the day when there was no Walmart after work. And no Amazon. I’m sure now it’s all climate change model stuff, and back to the topic of the post now, that can be for another time, Stupid Expensive School Projects.
I just saw a comment from one parent about her kid having to buy one specific and expensive Thesaurus because the teacher loved it. It was a deluxe model and cost way more than the basic thesaurus that would have been fine. I also saw parents comment on a number of items their kids never even used during the school year.
Several parents named a protractor. Good grief, sometimes I used mine so much that it would break and my mom would get me another one. And I was in junior high school then, what they call middle school now, at one of the worst schools in the city. I’m just guessing, but I think I probably learned more then, at that school, than private schools often teach now.
And I base that opinion partially on my own kids parochial school education. Often, I demanded that they show their work on math problems, rather than just the answer. I made them stick with units, knowing that just a numerical answer without a unit of measure was jibberish. I made them re-write English assignments and compositions, even when teachers accepted less than stellar work.
And those skills I used to push and tutor my own kids, most of them I learned by junior high school from good teachers, not in the college classes I later took. Indeed, I was often shocked in college classes at how little some instructors cared for detail, accuracy, and good sentences and paragraphs. When I was in school, if you had to write a paper for history class it was usually going to get almost as much scrutiny for form, punctuation, and spelling as the English teacher would give it. It made us better.
I used to be a manager at Staples, and I hated this time of year from the other side of the list, the retail employee trying to help frazzled parents on their ridiculous, demanding, and unnecessary school supply treasure hunt. One poor mother had the usual page long list, and in addition to all the specific supplies, paper towels, wipes, etc. listed, at the end the teacher had asked each parent for a cartridge for her laser printer, somewhere in the neighborhood of $80 if I remember correctly, on top of all the other stuff, including the scientific calculators that weren’t cheap.
This poor mother had tears in her eyes and was at the end of her rope when she saw what it was, and told me she had other children to supply as well. I told her to ignore the item and get what her kid had to have. I know teachers have no money in the school budgets for things like printer ink, and I know that they spend a lot of their own money on the classroom and kids. But parents are not able to be an open pocketbook either.
I well remember the frustration I felt at having three very different lists to fill at the last minute. I was spending at least $60 per kid in elementary school, and way more when they went to high school. That was a lot of money for us, and worse for many others.
Anyhow, I know lots of us here are grandparents, and help out, at least with money, on these lists. I thought it would be interesting to hear your experiences and strange items on the lists. Having googled this before doing my own post, as well as working at Staples, I know I’m not alone in hating this time of year, and the lists.
When I was a kid, we really went to school on the first day with a cigar box our mothers somehow cajoled out of the stores for us. In it we had a couple of those thick pencils you used for a couple of years when you were learning to write, a box of eight crayons, a brown bottle of Elmer’s glue, the kind with the sponge on the top, and scissors. That was it.
From first to six grade in public school provided all book, pencils rulers etc, paid for from school taxes. Must students were given a pencil box by their parents. The point here is, school tax should take care of supplies….not being sent to Teachers Unions.
The dress codes are terrible too.
public schools are following colleges…adding additional layers of administration is VERY costly…you know that diversity counselors can be expensive but are critical for the smooth operation of the new government indoctrination centers /s
Yes, I have seen plenty of huge 2 story (or more) buildings for the Board of Education, for a total student body of fewer than 2000 kids. Dozens of offices full of people doing what?
One problem we have in Alabama is somewhere around 170 school districts, and we have only 67 counties. No telling how much $$ is spent on duplication of effort.
Late to the party here, but, I still have nightmares about graphing sines, cosines, and tangents on paper! Pushing 70!
Me too Shari I was not great at math but I will say i found Trig the least difficult of all the math classes in high school because you used formula’s. I had so much trouble with Algebra but it was a great foundation. It was funny years later when my daughter came home from school and was having difficulty solving an equation. All of a sudden I remembered “FOIL”. First, outside, inside, last. haha no calculator just good old fashioned reasoning 30 years later it came back to me.
Amazing, isn’t it! What’s learned through struggle remains learned. What’s handed to one easily, not so much!
Late to the party too. Except that I missed learning how to do it with a paper and pencil. I loved trig, but we all had graphing calculators by the time I was in high school. I really wish I knew how to figure everything by hand – especially square roots. I have yet to actually go through a tutorial online though. That’s my bad. Right now I’m doing homeschool 4th grade math. We’ll probably learn how to do all of that together LOL!
I did find a very nice math curriculum that teaches by problem solving – Beast Academy if anyone else is interested, and for more advanced math, The Art of Problem Solving.
The tiny parochial school the grandkids attended used the Saxon Math program. i could help with their homework if they got stuck. When he graduated from High School, I gave our oldest grandson my old slide rule and the instruction booklet. He’s sill wondering how we got to the moon, depending on such things.
My school list in elementary school in the 50’s consisted of a pencil and lined notebook paper. Most of the supplies kids take to school now are doled out to the kids who don’t bring anything. My church has adopted a school in our community and we supply the endless items the school wants because the kids simply can’t afford them or the parents just ignore the lists.
We have a similar situation in our county. Many of the kids are poor farm kids, no extra money for school supplies. Hell our program includes snacks! On the weekend they send home a bag of groceries to help feed the families. More than our schools are broke.
Yeah and those people work year round and don’t get a huge pocket full of cash to start the year.
Interesting how areas are so different.
In our community the farm kids are the wealthy ones and the town kids are the disadvantaged.
The small rural school where the farmers kids attend is one that is the best because the farmers wives are in the class rooms and the farmers donate tons of money for the athletic and science programs.
The poorer schools are all in the small towns where the kids live in rentals or in assisted living with single mothers.
I remember that our rural school always had a good menu: the farmers who sent their kids to the school were also allowed to donate eggs, fresh produce, etc to the school’s lunches. We ate hearty and well–no fat kids that I can recall. (We also had about 20 acres to play on for a playground: swings, baseball diamond, kickball field, etc. 2x 20 minute recesses a day, a third 10 minute IF you earned it in the classroom, and physical education mostly outside 3x per week if the weather permitted. Nope, no fat kids among us…..)
And a calculator? I think there was one in the school’s library and one in the teachers’ lounge. NONE in the classrooms. We lived….
With my son we only sent what he would use immediately because what they do is put it all in one pile and dole it out to everyone. I’m tired of carrying everyone else, while others let the rest of us cover their behinds.
Good point Chuckles and something more parents should check on.
I found out about that the hard way when one of my younger sons told me how the teacher took all of the stuff we parents bought them, put it in a closet and then handed it out when it was needed.
The teachers had been doing this for years but since the kids did not know this would not be appreciated by their parents who paid for things just did not think to mention it.
When we found out this was the way things were done, well we put an end to the way things were done.
I can give you my perspective as a teacher in Canada (and as a student myself).
As a student, we were expected to know our math facts and proper spelling and grammar by the end of Grade 8.
The principal still gave out the strap (on the hand) for unruly children. A tiny elderly teacher could still haul a tall, “tough” Grade 8 kid down the hall and to the office by his ear.
Recess – I don’t remember ever seeing a teacher on duty. In the winter, we had huge snow piles. The goal was to be the “King of the Hill”. Every year, of course, the oldest class (Grade 8) would dominate, but we little kids would make plans to overwhelm them by sheer force of numbers.
Picture dozens of little kids of all ages rushing the hill from all sides as the Grade 8’s grabbed you a threw you down again. When 5 or more of us were able to take down a Grade 8 (legs, arms body – like a swarm of locusts) we would cheer in victory. No teachers to tell us to stop and I don’t recall anyone ever getting hurt. The big kids took care not to try and hurt us. It was a blast.
Also, snowball fights. I got a good one (a “slush ball”) in the eye one time and couldn’t see for a while. The teacher just told me (when I came in from recess) to wait a while and it would get better – and it did.
Now as a teacher – “Sorry no one is allowed on the snow hill. Snow has to stay on the ground. No sliding done the hill, someone might get hurt, etc..).
High school was a totally open and different experience. There was no grammar/spelling taught – you were expected to know it and teachers were surprised if you didn’t. I still remember my English teacher’s surprise when I used “it’s” instead of “its” in a story. This was Grade 9.
We mostly focussed on things like Shakespeare, English literature and creative writing. I still remember some of the great books we were asked to read (e.g. Brave New World) and the one I absolutely hated (Wuthering Heights).
For Math, I personally hated it. I am not a “Math Person” per se. I love creative arts and Science. I hated memorizing formulas, etc (no calculators) and did not see the reason to learn advanced Math. All the language and math I learned up to Grade 8 is all I have ever used/needed.
However, the sports, the music program, the social life – that was what made High School fun. I also love languages and took French every year. Our French teacher was great – she would throw a piece of chalk at you if you spoke English or weren’t paying attention. Her aim was deadly and we loved her for it.
As far as supplies go. Our system is different here. I never brought any supplies in Elementary (Kindergarten to Grade 8).
In High School, we needed binders and paper sometimes for writing stories and maybe pencils/pens but that was about it.
I do recall some classes asked for a Scientific calculator but not really for use in class, but more as a preparation for University (to learn how to use one).
As a teacher in Elementary school, the individual school is responsible to provide pencils, pens, paper, photocopying, printing, rulers, glue, Art supplies, etc. from their given budget.
Most teachers however do buy things that are needed and add interest and variety to their lessons. Most schools only provide the basics. Each year, a teacher is given a $200 budget to prepare the class/choose what the school will purchase for them. Anything further in the year has to be run by the administration and approved.
Teachers do provide lists sometimes, but for me, this is usually to save parents money by not buying things they don’t need. (for example, I don’t use binders in my class). The list you provided as an example is nothing like we would do here. Printer ink? It’s crazy that teachers are supposed to pay for that.
Anyway, that is my story – hope you enjoyed it.
Richard: we are kindred spirits. Your words brought back memories of recess during the winter months. How often did we play “King of the Hill” using the same strategy you outlined?? And no teachers in sight….
The nuns would toss a piece of chalk our way if they caught us daydreaming, and every once in a whike, a board eraser. We lived……i was lucky to never have had the nuns who were holy terrors in the classroom.
Like you, no grammar or punctuation taught in high school because you were expected to know it AND be able to put together a string of cogent thoughts in a paragraph, no matter if it was English composition, history, or the essay question on a biology test.
Our reading lists were similar, and had many of the classics required. Remember book reports? Yes, you had to prove you comprehended what you read.
Yes, it sounds like we grew up in the same day and age. The board eraser came flying only when the chalk didn’t have the desired effect.
Same with everything we wrote. We were expected to use proper spelling and grammar in every subject. Exam time often included short answer questions that needed to be a certain length. Filling the answer with nonsense just to fill the space didn’t fly.
Book reports – this was a good way to prepare for essay writing at University. “Coles notes” were popular then (no internet) for some students as a shortcut. Teachers were pretty savvy though and could no doubt tell (by using specific questions) whether you actually read the book.
Thankfully (apart from the one I mentioned) most of the books were classics and actually really enjoyable to read.
Considering the high school taxes, shouldn’t at least some of these supplies be provided by the district?
Public indoctrinators do not do this for lack of money. There is a shameful excess of public education money going to adminstrators. unions, contractors, lobbyists and other grifters. At the local, state and federal levels.
They do this because they can. To rub our noses in that they control our children, not us. They laugh over martinis at just how much abuse citizens will take.
My dad tells me in the 1950’s when he went to school in his hometown of about 2,000 people the school administrative staff was very small. The principal, for example, was also a teacher and a coach. Today, that same school has a huge bloated staff of full time administrators, not only the educationist bureaucrats but also secretaries and assistants. And the town is smaller today than it was 70 years ago!
That’s where a big part of the budget goes, it stays in the office and far less makes it to the classroom than you might think.
In NC, the ratio is about 3 overhead/admin for 1 teacher!
You can thank the existence of the federal Dept. Of Education for the bureaucrats…all the forms and reports take lots of extra people.
Ditto for the medical industry, forms, forms, forms.
The teachers union supported JoBama during the faux election. Just like when Carter ran.
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Yes. The excellent public schools I went to back in the day in NYS would have a principal, vice-principal, school secretary, nurse (elementary school) or guidance counselor (high school), janitor, and a few people for cafeteria staff. By the time my kids were school-age in the 90s, it was not uncommon for the public schools to have more administrative staffers than teachers.
Back in the day, for some parochial schools, they had a ‘stationery closet’ or kiosk, where the students could buy any needed pencils or supplies as needed during the year. The school stocked up at a discount with a large bulk purchase from the local office supply house.
I recall one elementary school offering the option of allowing the parents to send their kids in on or before the first day with a small check or cash in the amount specified, and they would outfit the student with the needed day one ‘bundle’ from the kiosk. Except for a lunch box and some other odds and ends that the family needed to supply.
Or, you could go to Kmart or the other discount chains and pick up the stationery needed, usually when you bought their non-uniform school clothes and that Snoopy lunch box.
This was back when going to a parochial elementary school was $50 or $60 for the year, except for those families who couldn’t afford it, and then the parish picked up the tab.
But the daily dilemma for the kids was whether to spend the 5 cents on a new pencil, or to spend it on a soft pretzel during recess, and try and squeeze one more day out of that stub.
I remember sneaking my father’s flat carpenter pencil out of his toolbox for a similar purpose. I put it back the next day; if he ever knew about it, he never said a word.
I live in a small Florida town that understands the value of our children and the role public education plays in their total development. Our community institutions all contribute to providing every child with the clothing & supplies they need to be ready for school, regardless of the families ability to pay to ensure nobody goes without! What was done to America’s children during the “Pandemic” will adversely impact this nation for an entire generation! God Bless Our Children..
I used to buy everything on the list, until I realized how much of it was going into a supply closet for the teacher to give kids whose parents didn’t buy their supplies. I began buying only the items for my own kids.
Well written Menagerie. I too remember going to school with little else than pencils and some elmer’s glue. We didn’t have exhaustive lists of stuff. You really bring up an excellent point about critical thinking. We have replaced that as you said with gadgets, and yes even teacher opinions, contemporary curriculum that is designed to imprint rather than encourage kids to think. Thinking and reasoning skills are the primary function of the learning environment and we have lost that in some respects. It’s also true of our lives overall, the television and TV pundits replacing questions, critical thinking and decision making. We are now told how to think and it’s weakened us as a people. i took Latin and Greek in high school and college. So much discipline is needed in learning those languages and to learn the history and culture along with it was invaluable. I wish the classics: reading, writing, arithmetic and the discipline they bring to us as a people would make a comeback as the primary focus of education.
Here in the Central Valley of California, the schools are 90% Hispanic with poor English skills. Your article just got me to thinking, how do these very poor moms do this? I asked around and found out everyone goes to the dollar store. They substitute name brands for whatever the dollar store has. They also put a note in the box to the teacher that this is what they could afford. My great grandchildren go to a parochial school. One has a single mom parent with a so so job. I am going to the dollar store with her today to complete her list. She excitedly just told me, “Your gonna love it Nonny. We can fill up a cart for $20. I’m looking forward to it.
The most troublesome students come to school with a copy of The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.
…… or a pocket Bible even , yikes !
I had 3 children one year after the other. After the first couple of years, I mostly ignored the school supply lists. If we already had it we used what we had from the year before. When they insist you buy x # of notebooks and at years end they are mostly empty you know that you are wasting money. Folders, binders, rulers, etc can all be “recycled”. I bought what my kids needed when they needed it. If you have a shoe box with a thousand used crayons, do you really need a new box of crayons every year?
Now my pet peeve for the beginning of the school year was always the paperwork. Why in the hell did I have to fill out the same damned forms, asking for the same damned information on each one, x 3 every single year? It drove me nuts. Just send me one demographic information sheet and ask me if there are any changes – is that so hard?
Calculators became a “thing” my junior year of college and were never allowed in an exam room, whether you had one or not. As my senior year began, one of the guys came back to campus and he had a new, used set of wheels, a Chevy Vega (insert riff about the melting aluminum engine blocks here) and an HP calculator. The car had cost $400. The calculator cost $400. It outlasted the Vega, anyway. My entire supplies list had always been a new pack of paper for my notebook and some pens and pencils. Lincoln learned math with a shovel and a piece of charcoal (at least according to the hagiography) and he seemed to have turned out OK.
This brings back good memories of my mother; as a child watching her put together our school supplies for all three of us. She loved those days, I think because she knew soon we would be out from under her feet, plus think she took it as a challenge.
Just yesterday was going through a scrapbook she had put together and there were beautifully handwritten personalized notecards from each of the different grades from the elementary school teachers, welcoming their new students to the coming school year. I wonder if teachers till do that.
My mother’s biggest task was making sure we all had new clothes for the first day, shoes that fit or at least weren’t scuffed up beyond repair of the thickest polish, and still remember, as the youngest, mom became quite the seamstress altering the hand-me-downs so my dresses fit properly.
Good memories; and yes, cigar boxes were essential for holding our supplies.
My freshman year at college, 1974, a required course was “Electronics Mathematics.” No calculators allowed. I had to learn to navigate a slide rule to succeed. It was rather daunting.
I bought an expensive TI Scientific Calculator, for my homework, but not allowed in class.
$125 in ’74 was a LOT of money.
The following year, the school not only approved calculator use, but had a great discount for students. About $65, as I recall.
Oh well, if a slide rule was good enough for most of the NASA programs in the 1960’s, I guess it was good enough for me!
I forgot about my slide rule! Had one in high school (graduated in 1965). Since hand calculators didn’t exist then, there was no discussion about it.
I was statistician for our school’s sports teams. I would go into the locker room at half time and knock out the percentages on my slide rule.
We got our first slide rules in 8th grade (Catholic school explains a lot).
The cheap plastic kind that you had to sandpaper the sides down so it would slide without sticking.
So much of what we considered being mean to us by the Nun’s is looked back on now almost fondly.
They might have been tough but we learned.
All the ‘ schooling ‘ in the world is useless when the focus is on WHAT to think …. instead of HOW to think.
My best teacher was the auto shop instructor, the ONLY teacher who did this.
When we were baffled by an engine problem , be it a lawnmower , car , motorcycle or whatever , he drilled into our heads not to just start replacing parts …. but THINK …. fix ” The Problem ” , not the symptom of the problem.
Lots of professional mechanics out there have still not learned this.
I just found a kid to beat up on the first day of school and took all his stuff.
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Thanks! We take ourselves too seriously.
Did you go to my religious school Nick?
There is always one guy like that and usually a few girls.
We were terrified of a huge hulking girl named Maria who took what she wanted, we pretty much gave it up when she demanded anyway.
I was joking, but I did go to a christian private school for a couple of years.
Every year in our ultra blue town, the post office runs a school supply program whereby people who want to participate place a plastic bag provided by the post office on their mailbox for pick up of school supplies for “needy” children. I often think about the free breakfast, free lunch and free snack to take home these kids are getting and ask the question “where are the welfare mothers and what are they spending their government checks on”? Is it not enough that the local school district is bloated from top to bottom and my property taxes are out the wazoo? I am all for charity, but I have found that the bigger the budget, the more the schools/teachers expect.
And the fathers, “cplogics”, where are the fathers?
Cplogics… regarding “welfare moms”
When I did home health work, at least two of my favorite coworkers told
me about their childhoods. One was the daughter of a mental patient (and she herself gave birth to her first child at age 15… she had been a runaway and teen mom, survived on low skill jobs and eventually, an abusive husband. But she was an EXCELLENT and sympathetic LPN. You would be lucky to be in her care)
Another was the daughter of a crack addict who passed away young, leaving this hardworking woman to care for a disabled sister…
We have children in our communities with VERY meager resources. God bless those who step up to care for them (and school administers who do not exploit impoverished families)
Several years ago I was told by a wealthy parent that all of the lovely new things at the elementary school down the street were NOT furnished by the usual fundraisers. The chain link fence to keep kindergartners out of the road at recess, the picnic tables and veggie garden were all provided by a group of parents with means who stepped up once they were provided with a list. Less wealthy parents were not harassed and shamed with endless fundraising
Wondering999, I don’t doubt the veracity of your story regarding your two co-workers. I believe in today’s society these two individuals are rare – not the norm. Government subsidized breakfast, lunch, dinner has caused the abdication of a parent’s role in providing for their children. We have had 60 plus years of this and I don’t have to show you what the fall out is – I am sure you know. I applaud the two individuals you mentioned above for their tenacity and work ethic, but this simply is not wide spread enough to make a big difference in our welfare culture.
Our children will be home schooled this year. The list is much shorter.
the best list:
Bring your brain
Curiosity
Willingness to think (hard) about ‘how’ and ‘why’
I hear you Eric.
Threatening students to get these dreaded injections or else, I wouldn’t trust the public school system with my children, either. These days, many schools have injection centers set up inside their gymnasiums. Parents must be deluded to trust their precious children to these lunatics!
‘Supply lists’ are the very least of our problems this year.
Can’t imagine the problems that will be caused by forcing kids to wear masks all day.
Re-breathing CO2 all day through a wet mask? I’ve never worn one and won’t.
Home schooling is the way to go if possible, it’s also a great way to avoid the CRT and other Marxist propaganda.
I remember my favorite grade school teacher, he always started class with a prayer, then we stood to say the pledge of allegiance.
This year the excuse for so many markers, crayons, pencils, etc, was no comingling of supplies among the children because of Covid contamination. So the child’s used supplies are put in ZipLock bags separate from the other children. A new one for me was the required headphones. This is a school in Texas.
My husband and I bought school supplies for my niece and nephew a few years ago. My Sister-in-law sent us the two lists from the kids school with the items we needed to buy and not having human children of our own, we just assumed that we could get the fun version of stuff that was listed. Instead of the plain color binders, notebooks, pencils and folders the list called for, we bought the ones with characters, animals, glittery binders and fancy pencils, pens, ect. After sending everything to my Sister-in-law, she told us that the kids may not even get to use any of those items because the teacher takes all the supplies and hands them out as needed to any kid who needs them. She also said that the Lysol wipes, hand sanitizer, and all the other oddities go to the school as well. I was livid, like what the hell, you spend money on your kids school supplies, you should keep those supplies at home and give them to your children. Parents should not have to buy supplies for other kids or cleaning supplies for the classroom. I don’t know why or when schools started these outrageous school supply lists, but parents should fight to stop this BS. I’m guessing that the reason why everything has to be handed in and in plain colors is because the school doesn’t want one child to have something that another one doesn’t. It’s that every kid gets a trophy approach, which is just ridiculous.
This was a list from a Catholic School. Not sure if the public schools demand 4 containers of Lysol wipes, cleaning supplies and big bottles hand sanitizer.
My kids’ public school requests three jumbo hand sanitizers per kid. This was even before Covid.
That’s craziness.
All we ever were required to have is our own travel size kleenex box. (Our school desktops opened up so we could store our things here.) The teacher had a large box on her desk. This was before hand sanitizers, etc. We were required to wash our hands before and after lunch, before and after recess. When we got sick, we got sick. We lived…..
In my day Lysol was the threat used to wipe out your mouth when you said a swear word!
Use the liberal education Covid crap against them….say:
To prevent contamination of Covid-carriers touching supplies distributed to my child or airborne Coronavirus contaminating supplies distributed to my child, I will be retaining and distributing the applicable supplies to my child, as needed.
Include a photo of the purchased supplies with the response (which you might want to retain & submit for next year’s response).
Clearly this is Socialism at work: everyone is equal in the classroom.
I remember being incredibly envious of the kids who’s parents could afford a Trapper Keeper, unlike the rest of us who had the plain blue denim binder.
Yet my school supplies were for my personal use. Those who couldn’t afford even the most inexpensive supplies somehow made do.
I remember in 3rd grade and not being up to speed on memorizing all my multiplication tables. I was forced to stay after class all by myself with teacher, Mrs Meyer, until I did. One time I started to cry and teacher asked why. I told her because my mom is going to hit me with the belt. I was very scared. After that I remember seeing my teacher talking to my mom in front of the school when she picked me up. I learned my multiplication tables real good. She was my favorite teacher of all time.
In grade school and high school I was one of the top math students in my school district. We didn’t use calculators much at the time but we did use them for multiplying and dividing large numbers. In the 10th grade I had a teacher who had immigrated from Iran. He was very anti-calculator but still allowed them to be used. He said in Iran they didn’t have money for calculators so they did all the math in their heads. He could multiply ridiculously large numbers almost instantaneously.
Inspired by this, I began to try to do the same. Not all of the time, but whenever I could. It became a habit and, though I have never reached the level of his abilities, I continue to get better at doing things in my head even now (I’m 50). My ability to think mathematically is a superpower that sets me apart from my peers (I work in engineering).
In college, I had a microwave engineering class taught by a very old school mostly retired professor (he only taught that class, one semester a year). He would not allow the use of a calculator (at this point every engineering student had an HP graphing calculator as an essential tool). He did set up the final calculations to be easily worked numbers (ex 6 divided by 3 = 2) so we wouldn’t waste time working decimal places because the important point was properly applying the appropriate equation. Most of the equations could be easily memorized, but this was not allowed either. We had to start with Maxwell’s equations (fundamental physics) and derive the appropriate formula for the circuit using partial differential equations, then plug the numbers in and get the final answer. This was easily the best course I ever had.
I later went back to UNLV and took Physics I to begin refreshing my skills for a masters. When I signed up, even the physics department admin staff told me “that professor is the one nobody wants”. I had to miss the first class because I was out of the country. I went to the professor in his office to find out what the ‘rules’ were (open book exam? cheat sheet on exam? etc). He didn’t allow any of that. Like my microwave engineering professor, he encouraged learning how to derive the formulas using calculus. I worked my butt off, doing as many problems in the book as I could, rather than the 10 weekly assigned problems. The limiting factor was usually that my hand could not write anymore after doing 10 hours straight of physics. When I got to the exams, I was absolutely crushing them, while the average student in the class was struggling to hit 50%. At the time I was 40 years old, and despite having worked for almost 20 years as an engineer, I felt I had significantly leveled up in my intellectual ability. I could suddenly see applications for that physics in an amazing number of places you wouldn’t expect.
That UNLV professor had decent reviews online but everyone said to avoid him because he should be teaching at Harvard and he’s too advanced for a school like UNLV. It’s amazing that kids don’t understand what a gift it is to have a professor like that, but I also understand because when I was a kid, I’d probably have written the same thing.
Somehow we have to teach our kids to value the opportunity to learn. I think the problem now is, with the ‘everyone’s a winner’ mentality, kids have become afraid to ever fail or lose. If something is difficult they get huge anxiety because they are terrified of failure and they don’t engage.
You were so fortunate to have those professors. I had one like that myself. And to me it was just a part of how I learned that I always knew how to derive the formulas.
When I was in elementary school I wanted to be the smartest kid in school, with the best grades. Math was my weakest class. I too learned to do more problems than the assigned ones so that I would master the material. I always did that, especially in college.
Oops, the above ended up as a reply instead of on the main thread…
50? same here. They used the belt in the olden days.
Our teachers used rulers on the hands
The headmaster used a stick on the bottom–mainly recalcitrant boys got that ( there were many)
I once had a sadistic teacher who demanded everything be perfect-clean socks, polished shoes, clean uniform, good results in tests.etc
He smacked everyone in class but not could not find fault with me except once when he was in a foul mood and smacked me with the ruler for biting my nails.
I remember the paddles that some of the teachers had in the 1960s.
I never got hit but some of my classmates did. You could hear it in the classroom from out in the hallway.
I didn’t have my first calculator until I started studying Physics in college. We didn’t have lists when I went to school. We were given assignments and it was up to us to get them done. The supplies we used were irrelevant. On the other hand, I graduated from high school in ’78.
PS: I can’t even imagine doing geometry without a compass, protractor and ruler.
Thank you very much for writing this article because this has been one of my biggest complaint issues for years. When I grew up there was no such thing as a school list. My parents paid property taxes which funded the schools which in turn funded supplies at the school. The only items I took to school were my sack lunch and a book bag that had paper, a couple of pencils, scissors, a ruler and a protractor. Anything else I needed was already there and paid for through state funding. At one point I attended a private school but the school supplies there were paid for out of the tuition for my attendance.
Just like with you there were no calculators until college level, and even then the calculators were only allowed in the advanced math classes with some instructors refusing to allow them at all. I still remember my statistical techniques midterm exam which was only one question, but the formula for the answer was three pages long and you were graded on your work. There was no such thing as pushing a button to get the answer like a trained monkey could do. You had to know how to translate word problems into formulas and be able to graph your results. Slide rules were your friend back then but these days people don’t even know what they are much less how to use them.
When our son was in kindergarten he received a below average grade for his ‘skipping skills’!?! Certainly not something I want the educational system to focus on. When he was in the second grade I received a school list, but a polite one, asking parents for help ‘if they could’. We had had an exceptionally good year so I went to Costco and literally bought an entire pallet of supplies for his class then drove to the school to deliver it. It took the principal with two aids the entire lunch hour to unload it and his teacher said she was still using those supplies two years later. However, in truth, no parent should feel obligated to buy anything other than basic items for use by their own child because they are already paying for it through their property taxes or by paying tuition.
When our son was in fifth grade I used to help him and his friends with their math and was shocked to learn that many of them did not have their times tables memorized. Their math teacher designated TWO WEEKS of class time to *teach them how to use a calculator* rather than teaching them how to multiply and divide. We refused to allow our son to use a calculator and insisted he do his math without one, much to his chagrin and that of his teacher, not because we couldn’t afford it but because unless you learn the basics you will be at a disadvantage later. Calculators are definitely a crutch, do far more harm than good for children in the long run and should be prohibited in K-12.
Thank you for tolerating my rant.
Thank you for ranting.
Tennessee government noted several years ago that public school math scores mysteriously declined after Grade 3.
I note that grade 3 is usually when multiplication is taught, and many schools fail to teach multiplication well
I think your “rant” is called common sense.
My father, a farmer with a modest income, paid property taxes for the supplies for public school kids AND paid full tuition to send his 5 kids to a parochial religious school AND paid 100% for their school supplies. The man is pending sainthood as we speak 😉
When was the last time you saw a Crayola TV add? Why is their brand name on your list? Corporate America most love these lists. Their names appear on it.
Most recent enrollment numbers are from 2017 from US Census. Population in grades 1-12 puts enrollment at 48.6 million students.
Whatever the item cost, apply a, perhaps, ‘made in China’ 30%-40% per dollar profit x 48.6 mil students = over $17 million
for each dollar you spend.
At .35 cents profit x 48.6 million students, $17,010,000 – seventeen million ten thousand dollars profit per dollar spent per item per student. Or $35. per $100. spent per student is $1,701,000,000. That’s Billion.
Warrior, Sharpie, Elmer Glue, Kleenex, Crayola plus dozens more who buy shelf space in the pharmacies, supermarkets, Staples, Office Depot’s, Costco, no public advertising expenses. Their name appears on every family’s list. How and why did they get on the coveted lists avoiding the large overhead of advertising? I see only global corporate names.
If retailers ‘sell’ or ‘rent’ or ‘reward’ companies with shelf space it’s fair to ask if the Teacher’s unions do the same.
Why the brand names on the lists? Is the information chain of command from the Teacher’s Union’s first to corporations, next to wholesalers, next to retailers and lastly to the parent(s) who receive a Teacher’s Union’s list?
The clothes cost more then the pencils and paper. Will uniform companies be enriched next as the *value* of each child student is calculated in dollars? A la Chinese students to erase identity.
.
Hahahahahahahaha!!!!! SPOT ON! Brings back memories from decades ago.
I still have the letters that I sent in disgust. The classroom supplies in particular — which seemed to be most of what was on these lists, rather than merely individual student supplies, were particularly galling. I sent bills to the school system for my time and offered thereafter to just send a check for the entire classroom’s supplies, rather than wasting my time. But nope. Dense. So then I just flat-out refused to purchase any classroom supplies.
TEACHERS: GET A CLUE:
When these items are purchased in bulk by the school, or just one classroom, they are cheaper, and get a sales tax discount, which parents do not get.
If someone has to go buy this stuff, it’s far far far less costly in human time and effort for one person just to purchase a hundred items than for a hundred people to have to go buy one item each.
For the classroom items, make a frigging list. Add up the costs. Divide by the number of students. Collect the money from the students and go buy the tissues, dry erasers, packages of construction paper etc. yourself.
(Yet another one of the 1400 reasons that made it an easy decision to yank my kids out of public school and homeschool them.)
WHY is any parent buying “classroom” supplies?
What on earth are we paying TAXES for???
Forgive my ignorance, but having no children of my own, I’m out of the current school shopping loop.
I’m utterly shocked and appalled! Parents are being charged TWICE for their children to attend public schools!
.
It was a slow, sneaky feature creep. Back in the day it was individual students’ pencils, looseleaf binders and paper. Maybe add in the gym uniform and sneakers. Rent or buy a musical instrument, if applicable.
Then the additions: protractors, rulers, crayons…
Then special project supplies… and field trip fees…
And then teachers started adding: construction paper, box of tissues, calculators, typing paper, poster board, particular kinds of notebooks, particular amounts of writing implements, dry erasers, white board markers, paper towels, appointment books, thumb tacks, stapler and staples, particular books, paint supplies, paper clips, snack supplies, stickers, labels, toilet paper, copy paper, etc. etc. etc. whatever their little hearts dreamed up that they would like to have — initially while (remember?) carrying on that on their meager salaries they were having to purchase supplies themselves (which may or may not have been true, depending.)
Calculators … I read a comment somewhere this past week about how so many cashiers can’t make change without the cash register. About 20 years ago I took a part-time job over the Christmas holiday selling computers, printers etc. One of the tests I had to take when applying was all about making change!
In junior high school I remember having mental math drills. I always know how much change I will get before the cashier does. Of course, when I was in school we didn’t have pocket calculators.
Like you, Menagerie, I loved math, particularly geometry, and I can’t imagine not knowing what I learned in those classes!
Why do kids need their own headphones for school? Does anybody remember sitting around a table with those blue or black headphone, they all plugged into a little box that sat in the middle of the table, what happened to those. Also schools should bring back the Ditto machines?, loved the smell of the freshly printed paper that came from the Ditto machine.
it was ethanol…..
It smelled really good though?
A couple things bothered me about the “school supply” list that we had to provide.
Most of it was put into a kitty for the entire class to dip which added to the expense instead of just providing for one child. For instance, so many sharpies and highlighters, pencils, etc.
Second, the fact that the list came out after the school supply sales were over.
When I got to college, after 7 years in the Navy, I learned that I needed a slide rule to do math and other problems. Fortunately Isaac Asimov.had written a book on how to use one! And the first thing you learned was, what is the order of magnitude of your answer? Math today is designed to confuse not enlighten children, to make them and their parents feel helpless and hopeless.
log – log duplex decitrig.
you had to understand the ‘why’ of math in order to be able to use it.
When I took intro to calculus in college, we had to calculate integrals the long way – about a page and a half of calculations. One error early on could mess up the the calculations, and required going back over the work line by line to find the error.
Once we learned that, we went to the next chapter in the textbook, and there was a formula. “You mean there’s a formula for this?” we wailed. Yes, said the instructor, but you needed to understand the why of the formula before you could use it. He’s long since retired, but I wonder if the textbook has been, too.
In 1969 when I entered college, I had to buy a $34 slide rule when tuition was $53. I still have it and know where it is. I 1972 or so Hewlett Packard came out with the HP 35 for only $435. I never owned one but I was allowed to use a neighbor’s for my homework. I loved it.
My first office job was to program NC mills and a punch press which involved all sorts of sines and cosines. I did so with sine and cosine tables on a mechanical adding machine which ground away for up to 30 seconds to multiply and divide.
My first calculator was a HP-25 for a much more reasonable $165, which was programmable and I loved it.
In my town of NJ the median real estate tax is $17k. Roughly 70% goes to the schools. Almost $12k per household, then we pay NJ tax and that also goes towards schools.
More recently they tacked on “activity fees”. So if you represented your school in sports, cheerleading, debate etc, you had to pay for it.
I grew up in the same area. Teachers would drive old or low cost vehicles. Now BMW’s, Mercedes, etc?
The system is not sustainable and we need to start with reducing the pensions and health benefits to private company standards.
PS When teachers retire, they move to a more pension friendly State.
vote for tax portability going with the student.
Then parents can send their students to schools that teach, rather than indoctrinate and propagandize.
Competition for the teachers unions and bloated “Administration” (which consumes much of the increase in ‘education cost’ over the past 50 decades).
THIS
I still, to this day , remember the day my sister in law showed us the list of items for her 1st grader. What galled me the most was that there on the bottom of the list was a note saying all these supplies would be kept in a closet and handed to any student who needed them. Not her child, but any child in the class. There’s you’re socialism in action.
At my kids’ schools, they have huge supply lists. The lists are at least double what a single child could possibly use in a year (i.e. 3 jumbo sized hand sanitizers). A teacher told us that up to 50% of kids bring zero school supplies. She told us the average was 25%.
So responsible parents are paying for other children’s school supplies.
Yup, just like the tax system and welfare system. It’s voluntary communism.
“From each parent, according to their ability. To each child, according to their need.”
Remember, Hillary told us it takes a village.
Slightly OT, but when I was in graduate school we had to learn how to use Multiple Regression Analysis to analyze Census data. Of course the University had an IBM mainframe and a software package (SPSS) to do that, but we had to do it by hand a couple times to make sure we understood the process.
So I don’t get too upset about calculators in the classroom as long as they students have been taught the manual methods before being allowed to use the calculators.
Every classroom in elementary school up through third grade had cards around the top of the room with the proper way to print each letter, both capital and small. In fourth grade, IIRC, the cards were Palmer method cursive. Spelling tests right up through junior year English. And of course the elementary school classroom spelling bees with, in which an incorrect spelling would send you back to your seat.
A very very in-depth site that researches “education” is named “Invisible Serf’s Collar”.
https://invisibleserfscollar.com/
Be warned: it can be “too much to bear” to look under the hood at what is done in “education”.
The photo atop the home page is of a literal serf’s collar that was found in old Scotland. Illustrates what the “educrat blob” has in store for your children and grandchildren.
But the MAGA movement is taking back school boards and countering the propaganda
teacher’sunions.See the Dan Schultz’ Precinct Strategy, apply those strategies to school board race and go take what is yours:
https://precinctstrategy.com/
In college, I quickly learned to never buy the textbooks, either. Not unless and until the professor actually referenced them … which they usually didn’t.
In earlier grades, I had the very good fortune that my mother was a schoolteacher. ?
I agree with this post on every point except her assertion that teachers assign projects to get out of teaching. When administered correctly, projects can take weeks to grade. Furthermore, the state or district curriculum often requires that teachers assign a certain number (or percentage) as projects. Group projects, in particular, were mandated at the school where I used to teach. Big, fat, giant waste of instruction time and the kids learned nothing.
So many people assume that teachers have power over when, how, and what they teach. Teachers take their orders from the district and the state.
Like calculators, I feel that copying and pasting phrases and entire paragraphs from the internet has stunted students in reading and in developing the skill of writing. Plagiarism is rarely taught and it’s rules are never enforced.
I didn’t last but 8 years as a teacher. I expected too much. Kids and parents want everything to come easy. Administrators want teachers to teach the curriculum using the state’s methods and tests. Teachers have to operate in between all of these lines. It’s a sh__ sandwich of a job.
Read this AJC Aug 2019 regarding the general fees for students in different levels in 3 Atlanta counties, plus other areas of US. Lots of additional fees for sports, parking, lockers, T-shirts…list is endless.
The first commentor on this thread is and educator, should be well away of such fees and this issue in general.
Home schooling is not only a better education but it has to be cheaper than public schools.
https://www.ajc.com/news/local/start-school-takes-bite-household-budgets/NEum1XGefPILcCeQu0NfLI/
This reminds me of my first year of teaching, when I had to come up with money for an overhead projector, the educational (and over-priced) decor for the bulletin boards, etc.
Thankfully, Gov. Rick Perry announced that teachers could turn in their receipts for supplies (up to a certain limit that I no longer remember).
It was a “first” for a Gov. to think about what was really going on in classrooms, during early August.
Thank you, Gov. Perry!
In my day they used the belt, not calculators, and we liked it.
One man’s crutch is another man’s tool I suppose.
I convinced my parents to get me a TI-85 for Christmas my Freshman year of highschool. I was in Algebra 2 and Trig at the time. This calculator was complete overkill for that math class, but it was great for playing Tetris with.
Anyhow, we had a short, two-week unit on probabilities and permutations in that class. After doing the homework and realizing there were basically five types of problems for the whole unit, I learned the syntax for writing code on my TI-85, and created a program to streamline the problem solving.
It took me maybe five minutes to complete all twenty problems on the unit exam. When I dropped the test on the teacher’s desk, he asked,
“Do you need help?”
“No, I’m done with the exam” I replied.
“OK…. Let’s see how ‘well’ you did then.” He said somewhat sarcastically.
After he finished grading the test and saw that I had answered every problem correctly, he was definitely surprised.
“Mind explaining how you managed this?” he asks.
I showed him the program I wrote, and demonstrated it on four or five of the problems. Since this was before the age of the internet, it was pretty clear that I wrote this program. Given that he knew I had to have full understanding of the material to write a program like that, he thought I earned some extra credit for ingenuity.
Organize the parents and tell the school they have to spend that money on food now!
When I attended elementary school in Ontario Canada, school was an all-inclusive black box. You just showed up. None of this 4 boxes of tissues for the teacher garbage. This was back in the ’60s of course and it might not be like that now.
In the US, it ought to be the same, considering the property taxes I pay and for what? I’ll never have a child attend public school as it is now. It ought to be illegal.
School districts are very creative at finding new ways to soak the taxpayer. Like flying a-la-carte on Spirit Airlines.
I was such a little turd . I would always start out well kitted out and slowly loss, destroy and break my stuff.
As an adult some of my kit I have been using for decades now, looking at my socket set I reminisce about when it was shiny and new..
Pencils stuck great in the ceiling tiles, if you knew how to fling them. We used to make a game out of it.?
Yes. And we made triangular “throwing stars” in shop. Same game.
I never had to have a list. In the old country, it was a couple of Bics and pencils. The shool provided everything else, including the notebooks. But those were good Catholics, the school was private and the tuition was not cheap ( but not exhorbitant ).
Coming to the US, again, I just bought what I needed, but those were nicer times.
In the 9th grade at Christmas my parents bought me a fancy calculator.. you know… arithmetic. Wanna do the square root, well, do it the old fashion way. Logs? Transcendental functions ( cos, sin )?… That’s what tables were for.
In the summer between the 10th and 11th grades I was making money off my summer job so I splurged and bought a TI SR50 at the Navy Exchange… something like 80 bucks! And that was the discounted price, you see?
As a junior, I was taking Physics and I took my calculator in. Everybody was impressed and everybody wanted to borrow it.
So… I went back to the Exchange and bought a nice Pickett slide rule. Nobody wanted to borrow that and it taught me the meaning of logarithms.
Then I went to college.
My freshman physics professor was able to do arithmetic in his head, faster than I could in my then fancier programmable, TI SR56. So, I figured I’d sharpen that skill.
Note: I did learn to program the SR56 to do numerical analysis, fast fourier transforms, etc… so that wasn’t a waste at all. But that’s a different skill that helped years later.
As I get older, I exercise my brain by doing designing stuff in my head, which requires that I do arithmetic, some logs, some trig, etc… And I don’t need no stinking crayons to do that.
Granted, I do need a cigar and a drink when I design stuff in my head, and it is a good indication that I should stop drinking and hit the water when the logs gets slow.
I was lucky to get a slip stick (slide rule) and blue jeans and sneakers were a no no! Girls had to wear a dress or skirt! I notice that millenials kinda love knapsacks! My lunch was in a “brown bag!”
Those brown bags in the end were neither cost nor environmentally effective. They catered to the convenience of not carrying twice is all. I carried them too. In hindsight, they were self indulgent.
We carried those square metal lunch boxes. You know, the ones that are in demand now as antiques.
Had a Partridge Family lunch box at age 7. A prized possession of the early 70’s.
Yep! Same here.
land of the giants lunch box
Seriously??? Self indulgence seems more your comment than a brown paper bag.
lots of that going around. more by the day. perhaps it will devour itself as maher said. brown paper bag would be good mulch. can buy a lot of them for one lost or stolen lunch box. even recycle store-issued ones in those pre plastic bag days.
i paid for the cafeteria and later skipped it and bought a burger after school at a drug store. it had mayonnaise on it, a new and lovely luxury with the burger.
Yes! A brown CARDBOARD suitcase (which kept breaking with the weight of the books) was what I had until I went to high school and my parents could afford to buy me a brown leather attache case with compartments.
I still use brown bags, they keep water cold if you don’t want to lug a cooler.
Truckers used to strap a canvas bag full of water on the front of their trucks. The flow of air kept it cold. Haven’t seen one of those in ages.
Some of the higher dollar camping stores show the canvas water bags in their catalogs.
dat be wayciss
Scientific Calculators began to come down in price when I was in college. However, by that time I was a whiz with a slide rule. I continued to use a slide rule for my chemistry / physics / math classes in college.
When I was in grade school in Miami, Fl (80’s-90’s)-we always had long lists of school supplies. My 2 kids have zero list for school supplies- we are in public school in Los Angeles- Parents are asked to give up to $20 to the teacher the first day (if you can afford it) and they use the money collected from the class to pay for the paper, art supplies and pencils for all those kids. No one goes without even if the parents can’t pay $1 towards supplies.
I was in grade school in the ’50’s. We never had lists. But we did learn the importance of getting the basics down pat. Every 2 years I changed schools. I went from Baltimore County, MD to Cecil County to Allegheny County.
I remember the teach read from the Bible and then we stood for the Pledge of Allegiance to start the day in Grade School.
More memories, Those kids that were “connected” wore Gant shirts and had real “Barracuda” jackets. I could only afford the fake Barracuda as the inside plaid lining never came all the way to the zipper, so I always wore it zipped to hide that! Wing tip shoes were the norm.
… And we also recited the 23rd Psalm. Mid-1950s in a Pittsburgh PA-area school. We also did the “duck and cover” from time to time.
We had assembly every morning before classes where we had to line up in rows and a chapter from the Bible was read.
Then we prayed.
It was compulsory.
Hey, a Yinzer!
That is called a teacher slush fund wher you can bet only 2 or 3 bucks go to supplies!
Neither did my kids. We home schooled them.
If the school district is begging for money in California then maybe they should fire some of the bloated administration and pay for it that way.
Typically, only 20% of the school personnel budget goes to the classroom. The rest is bloat for administrators and HR.
What if 3 parents pay the $20?? Sounds like society in general.
Wow I never had children and had no clue things had changed so much supply-wise. Reedonkulus specificity. Sure do wonder where all these impoverishing NY school taxes end up (hahahahaha ka-ching).
Vaguely remember my mother growling about the high-school 3-ring binder requirement that abruptly appeared out of the ether sometime between my older brother and me. But yeah, elementary school, it was a pencil box or zip bag that would last for years—mucilage—roundy-tip mini scissors—backup husky pencil (so the boys couldn’t show off breaking it between their fingers) and the famous #2 pencil that would inevitably get snapped in half week one. Black&white scramble comp books were there too. Needle-sharp protractor always ready for self-defense purposes (suburban school, pretty safe, except for milk money extortion and that #2 pencil back-stab in third grade).
Please homeschool/engineer a school-board takeover if you can: it’s the future.
Crazy, right? My own list was loose leaf paper, black and white notebook ( era before CRT) , #2 pencils and a pen.