Educating Esmé (25 page)

Tape (clear, packing, and masking)

Timer

Thank-you notes

Thinking cap

Throat lozenges

Thumbtacks

Trouble basket

Vase

Wall mount tabs

Watercooler

Zip drive

Ziploc bags (sandwich, quart, gallon size)

Is
that
all? This list does not include subject-specific materials, like those you can use for arts and crafts (such as tempera paints, yarn, clay, brown paper bags, craft sticks, feathers, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, paper plates, colored tissue paper), math and science (baking soda, measurement sets, thermometers, scales, a microscope, magnets, models, Cuisenaire rods, counters, play money, calculators,
compasses), early childhood education (sand table, puppets, blocks, flannelboard, rhythm instruments, dress-up clothes), social studies (newspapers, time machine), reading materials (multiple-copy sets, magazines), or general hardware (computer, overhead projector and transparencies, paper cutter, dry erase boards, laminator, VCR and monitor, listening center).

When you land your first teaching assignment, scope out which supplies are already available to you in a general supply locker, teacher's lounge, or your classroom, and fill in the gaps as you are able. Teachers subsidize school systems; it is not uncommon for a new teacher to spend hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars out of pocket. This burden tends to abate somewhat as time goes on and materials are accumulated. One of the great challenges of being an educator is learning to work with what you have and realizing your vision of a classroom within your financial means. While this may be frustrating at times, no need to despair; many great minds have come forth from schoolrooms with much less than we have today. Luckily, the most important supplies you bring to the room can't be bought at any store: they are your inventiveness, your resiliency and dedication, your resourcefulness, your empathy for the children, your example, and the time you have spent in preparation for your momentous first day, a day that you can reinvent every September.

Good luck!

“One of the nation's most sought-after voices for empowering teachers” (
People
magazine), a “superstar of education” (
Scholastic Instructor
), and “the first lady of read-aloud” (
Teaching K-8 Magazine
), Esmé Raji Codell is an educator with many years of experience in the Chicago Public Schools and beyond.
Educating Esmé
won
ForeWord Magazine
's memoir of the year and first place for national education reporting from the Education Writers Association. Her novels for children have received numerous awards as well. A nationally renowned children's literature specialist and the author of
How to Get Your Child to Love Reading
, she was the recipient of a prestigious Patterson PageTurner Award for spreading the excitement of books in an effective and original way. As an advocate for literacy and literature-based instruction, Esmé has been a featured speaker at the National Museum for Women in the Arts and has appeared on CBS's
The Early Show
and CNN. Her performance prowess was also seen on C-SPAN's
Booknotes
and heard on NPR's
Voice of America.
She has been a keynote speaker for the International Reading Association, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and the American Library Association. Esmé lives with her husband and son in Chicago, where she runs the popular children's literature website PlanetEsme.com, and the unique literary salon the PlanetEsmé Bookroom, “Chicago's Literary Living Room.”