I ran into our school’s headmaster last night while I was putting up my Halloween bulletin board. He was on Sunday-night duty, which means waiting for the kids to come back to school after their weekend at home, so he had some time on his hands. We were chatting and I mentioned how difficult it was to get the colored paper and staples for my board.
I didn’t tell him this, but there’s some kind of ban on English teachers and school supplies. For the last month, when I’ve asked my TAs for something like blank paper, they’ve looked at me like I wanted a virgin sacrifice. If I harass them long enough, they’ll come up with the back of a Xerox for the kids to write on.
But the headmaster led me down to the Logistics Room, It’s an Aladdin’s cave of school supplies, a Prismacolor rainbow of printer paper, giant sheets of colored paper, origami paper, markers, rolls of tape, glue, scissors, all the things that a primary school teacher could want. And he told me to feel free to take whatever I wanted, and come back whenever I felt like it to take more. It was like one of those old Nickelodeon shows where the kid wins all the toys he can grab.
If I had a CD player to play the CD that came with our textbook, then I could — but I don’t really expect that.
