Written By Kelly in the City

Today, I’m sharing several *amazing* teachers’ classroom wish lists. Please help to #clearthelists! Above is Hannah, who teaches in Ohio. Read her inspiring story below and help fund her classroom here!

Note: I didn’t want to include too many stories because I feared that some would go unread, so I’ll be doing a second post with more! To be included, simply e-mail me (Kelly@kellyinthecity.com) a link to your wish list or project, a photo, and some information about what you do! Put #clearthelists in your subject line. :)

If you’re new here, Mitch and I used to be teachers. Through the New York City Teaching Fellows, he taught math and I taught English for seven years at an underserved public school in the South Bronx… and it was there that we actually met! When we left New York for Chicago, I stopped teaching. But Mitch continued on, and he celebrated a decade of service in public education a few years thereafter. (So proud of him.)

We have the utmost respect for teachers. They empower our children, help them realize their potential, and instill a love of learning in them. But teaching is tough. Really tough. (Frankly, it almost destroyed me, and I clearly wasn’t cut out for it!) While it’s an incredibly rewarding career, it’s also a grueling–and often times thankless–job. Why are there not multiple national holidays every year celebrating our educators? They shape the future of our country!

One of my biggest struggles when I was a teacher was the lack of materials.

My school was particularly corrupt, but the administration would stockpile supplies in a locked closet and hold them hostage. For what reason, I’ll never know, as they largely went unused. But one time, the door was unlocked and I investigated, and the pens were so old that the ink had dried up and the sticky part of the post-it notes no longer stuck to stuff. Okay; I’ll admit it. When I was in there, I smuggled out a whole lot of loose leaf which I later used to teach the five-paragraph essay. And while I’m coming clean, I might as well fess up to pretending I was part of the Teach for America organization and using their photocopier once a week to slowly reproduce 35 copies of Death of a Salesman. But it’s fine, right? I’m confident that both Arthur Miller and Teach for America would have approved. ;)