(NAME-MCE) Giving pencils, paper and pride

[KispokoT at aol.com]

Giving pencils, paper and pride
Nearly one child in five in Ohio and Kentucky lives in poverty.  Thousands 
more dance along the line. So when schools send home lists of school  supplies 
needed for the coming year - which often ring up to $50 or more -  families 
panic. 
So do teachers. 
A student without supplies is a child who loses out on learning, worries more 
 about hiding his need than doing his work and, when he is chronically 
scavenging  for paper or a pencil, compromises his classmates' learning as well. 
Nationally, teachers spend on average $500 to $1,000 out of their own pockets 
 to provide supplies for their students or make up for budget cuts. But Linda 
 DiBenedetto and 16,000 local teachers like her shop for free at Crayons to  
Computers, an extraordinary educational supply store that matches donated 
goods  to the teachers who need them. 
In its 10th year, the Bond Hill store, begun by a Leadership Cincinnati  
class, has given out more than $43 million worth of supplies to teachers from  188 
schools in a 15-county, three-state region. More than 75,000 students have  
benefited from the largesse of corporations, foundations and individuals. To  
shop at the store, teachers must come from districts with a high percentage of  
low income students, or volunteer at the store for three hours to earn a  
shopping visit. 
The backpacks are a stroke of considerable generosity, 10,000 of  them given 
by a local foundation. Crayons to Computers welcomes and receives a  bounty of 
materials, from hundreds of Estee Lauder makeup bags that double  perfectly 
as stylish pencil holders to batteries, wallpaper books and even  maracas. 
Teachers love the rare and chance finds and turn them into creative projects  
or behavioral incentives in their classrooms. But their bread and butter is 
the  seemingly bottomless supply of pencils, paper, scissors, glue, markers,  
notebooks, rulers and the eponymous crayons that are always available. 
"I've been teaching for 15 years, and every year I have more students who  
can't afford the basic supplies. They're sitting there and the next kid down has 
 all the new things. The playing field isn't level from the first day. But  
because of this store, on the first day I can figure out who doesn't have  
things, and I can kind of slide the supplies to them. We don't have to say a  
word. They just look at me and smile." 
As school districts face tighter budgets, they pass the squeeze on  to 
individual buildings, classrooms and families. Caught in the middle are  
conscientious teachers, who should not have to dip into their own pockets for  basic 
classroom supplies - but often do because they see the hardship not having  such 
supplies places on their students. The teachers who shop at Crayons to  
Computers use the same word when they sum up what the store means to them -  respect. 
They say it's not just a matter of the community sharing their  financial 
burden - which they appreciate - but sharing their concern for their  students. 
_http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070731/EDIT01/707310328
/1090&template=printpicart_ 
(http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070731/EDIT01/707310328/1090&template=printpicart) 
 
 



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