Disadvent 12

[psocoptera]

My 14yo came to me at 9:30 pm and said she needed 8 popsicle sticks, 10 pipecleaners, 10 drinking straws, 6 feet of yarn, and 20 rubber bands for an egg drop tomorrow, and then we needed a shoe box to put it all in, so, uh, clearly we are not quite out of the craft supply phase of life yet. (Some of those numbers may be slightly off, and I think we were actually a few popsicle sticks shy of whatever the number was and she's hoping someone else in her group will also have some. But seriously, I do not see how the satisfaction of having less "clutter" (a term I don't find useful) could ever compare to the satisfaction of being able to answer my kid asking "do we have any popsicle sticks or pipecleaners?" with "yes in this box labeled "popsicle sticks and pipecleaners"". (I should probably restock that box before the 11yo needs to do an egg drop...))

(Also if I was a high school science teacher I might choose to buy such supplies in bulk and provide them rather than assuming that every student has a parent going through life with the thought that an egg drop might break out at any moment - the 14yo later came back to take more pipecleaners, saying that "none of the guys in her class have any" - but perhaps I don't have the whole picture on the situation.)

Anyways. For today's disadvent I finished going through that box of paper. I think in the end I kept about 60% of it - surely more than anyone will ever use - but what if one of the kids suddenly needs a piece of cardboard, or a pretty picture from a calendar? It's happened before.

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

Oh wow. That's a lot of things on no notice! I would feel good to have them on hand too!

I'm likewise a bit bewildered by the teacher's choice to insist students source these themselves. I have to assume the teacher gave the kids a bit more notice than this and not all the students noticed or followed up (a week? two weeks?), but I've also seen some astonishing acts of not planning or communicating on the part of schools.

Apologies if what follows is WAY too much reflection about egg drops and school purchasing:

As a science teacher, I would just have the rubber bands and drinking straws on hand. I have a good guess of who I could borrow pipe cleaners, yarn, and popsicle sticks from — I bet if I emailed our faculty mailing list and said I needed them the next day, they would materialize, because I've seen other people do this and get an overwhelming number of offers. Or I could be a responsible adult and either buy them myself (involves borrowing a school credit card to get out of sales tax) or submit a purchasing form for the school to buy them (involves advance planning).

But I can also think of a bunch of reasons a teacher might not do this:

• Lack of advance planning: you thought you had this stuff but you didn't, so pass the problem on to the students. Hopefully with more than one day's notice though!
• Some clever person in the Business Office has made purchasing/reimbursement overly onerous with the goal of cutting costs
• There actually isn't money in the science budget for the supplies (this was a big problem the year I taught public school in the Bronx and we ran out of printer paper partway through the year); in a fancier district they may just have budgeted the money towards other stuff and assumed that rich stay-at-home parents will provide. Our richest suburban school district here seems to think it's ok to close school with very little notice or communication and it's got to be tied to some kind of assumption of privilege?
• Sheer logistical intimidation: if you've got 5 sections of 30 kids each and you haven't done this before, it might seem simpler to make all the kids bring the stuff in, than to buy 1500 pipe cleaners etc. I kind of doubt it's actually simpler, given how much nagging it takes 14-year-olds to e.g. hand in lab reports they have already completed and are just carrying around.
• Actually not having done this before ranks VERY high on my list of potential reasons. Doing this based on vague memories of how your own education did it, rather than any kind of logic about how it would work, or past experience.

But honestly, if you don't have the supplies yourself and you can't get them, it's a better idea to just modify the egg drop project to use supplies that you CAN get. Egg drops are flexible, you could do an egg drop with only printer paper, or only drinking straws and tape, or only rubber bands and toothpicks (although toothpicks are tedious and finicky). There's no need to rigorously follow someone else's supply list, unless you're trying to match it up exactly with either a past egg drop or an egg drop another teacher is doing, and then hopefully there's been enough advance planning that you could get the right supplies yourself so there aren't variations in what kids have. Not all pipe cleaners are created equal, etc.

[psocoptera]

I'm sorry if I sounded judgey about high school science teachers! I did mean sincerely that I don't know how much I don't know about the situation - I have no idea when they got the assignment, or what the budget looks like (the school is also in the middle this year of a major reconstruction and shift from old to new buildings, so I have no idea how many legacy supplies got lost in the move, or someone lost track of ordering because of disruptions). And in some cases J wanted more of things than the number on the paper, because I guess her group is hoping to prototype and test their design. I know as a high school parent I only get a very narrow window into these things. :)

[crystalpyramid]

No no no you're fine! I just honestly can't imagine asking 14-year olds to come up with that much stuff, even with longer notice, because the average 14-year-old is probably not nearly as together as yours, and it's going to end up being way more work than just buying the stuff oneself. And also, like, equity?

Prototyping and testing sounds like a really good impulse! It's hard to get kids to see the value of that.

[psocoptera]

I believe if the egg survives a 1-meter drop, they get full credit, and if the egg survives a 5-meter drop, they don't have to write an essay about the forces involved, so these kids are *motivated* :)

[crystalpyramid]

Okay, that part is clever on the teacher's part!! Good luck to J!

[irilyth]

FWIW, I dropped the 14-year-old off at the CVS next to the high school this morning, so she could pick up the supplies she was missing.