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School Supplies Making a Difference
The students in Karen Trout’s middle school classrooms rarely come to the first day of classes with the school supplies they need to succeed. For parents trying to make ends meet, it is difficult to find the resources to buy three-ring binders and notebook paper. Thanks to the Teacher Resource Center (formerly Kids in Need) program, however, Karen and her colleagues have found a solution.
“It was better than Christmas,” says Karen of her first visit to World Vision’s Teacher Resource Center in Chicago. “Our first trip we found almost everything we needed to get our classrooms ready, and when the kids came in on the first day of school, they found their new supplies sitting on their desks.”
Teacher Resource Center is a joint project between World Vision and the School and Home Office Products Association (SHOPA). SHOPA members donate excess products – markers, notebooks, pencils, maps – to World Vision, which then allows teachers from Chicago public schools to come “shop” at the Teacher Resource Center. For a school to become a member of the Teacher Resource Center, 70 percent or more of its students must be on the government’s free lunch program.
Karen and her colleagues found an innovative way to utilize their Teacher Resource Center products. Students at Johnson School earn “merit bucks” for attendance, being in uniform, good behavior, helping others, and academic effort. The bucks can then be spent at the school store to “buy” necessary supplies like pens and pencils, or can be used to pay for school field trips. “When the students get their supplies this way, it doesn’t seem like a handout,” says Karen. “It helps them not to feel poor. They learn that through their own character, they can earn the means to buy their supplies or go on field trips, even if their family can’t afford it.”
The Teacher Resource Center supplies help provide for students’ needs, but Karen says they have the added benefit, through the merit buck program, of creating a more disciplined environment, which leads to a better education. “It’s such an incredible benefit for us,” she says.
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