Beyond crayons: How we fight for what our students need
By Samantha Rosado-Ciriello
As we all get caught up in the back-to-school season, I am remembering my first day in the classroom. I was a brand-new kindergarten teacher in Yonkers, and it was a rocky start.
I walked into a completely empty classroom — no desks, no chalk, no erasers, no paper, no books. Nothing. When I went to the principal for supplies, she handed me a box of purple crayons and said, “Here you go.”
This experience is no surprise to many educators who find they are without the resources they need to teach. Maybe that’s one reason the people who work in classrooms are such a resourceful group — out of necessity. That year, I went to thrift sales and garage sales. I purchased some construction paper, placed it around the room and told the children, “These are your seats. Sit on the paper.” My colleagues down the hall pitched in with supplies they could barely spare themselves, and I patched together a workable classroom. Because that’s the other thing educators do, especially if they are in a union: They help each other out.
I spent $3,000 of my own money on supplies that year. We eventually did get some furniture. But since it was left over from a sixth-grade classroom, my tiny 4- and 5-year-olds were left with their feet dangling as they sat at the oversized desks, trying to sit up the way the teacher instructed so they could learn to write their first letters and numbers.
A continuing challenge
All this happened many years ago, but as president of the Yonkers Federation of Teachers, I know educators continue to experience shortages every day. When a media outlet asked for examples of teachers struggling for the resources they need, members flooded our Facebook page with comments. They needed so much: books, art supplies, math manipulatives, construction paper, writing paper, paint, crayons, markers — you name it. Many were relying on DonorsChoose and generous neighbors and friends to help stock their classrooms.
“I can’t remember the last time I got lined writing paper,” said one. “Thank God for the Dollar Store,” wrote another, who was spending her own money on supplies.
I purchased some construction paper, placed it around the room and told the children, “These are your seats. Sit on the paper.”
Some shortages are not always obvious: Several educators told me about programs the district would purchase, but they required printing worksheets for every student. It was an impossible task because the teachers only got one ream of paper. Every year, our union goes to the district because our teachers are missing the Smart Board markers they need; without them, the Smart Boards go unused. Projectors are another problem: We might have the projector itself, but it won’t work without the missing bulbs and cables.
There were so many missing parts and pieces one year that we filed a grievance over inadequate resources. Educators were being penalized on their evaluations because they weren’t able to do their jobs without essential materials. Teachers are amazing and flexible; they do what they need to do because they care about their kids as if they were their own — but there’s a limit to what is humanly possible.
There were so many missing parts and pieces one year that we filed a grievance over inadequate resources.
Now the union gives teachers forms to record any materials they’re missing, and enumerating the supplies they need from the district, protecting them from poor evaluations due to lack of resources.
Winning back our libraries
Every school needs a library. But in Yonkers, all the elementary school libraries were dismantled. Teachers bought their own classroom books, and we lived like that for years; but it’s not the same as having a central place for children to explore hundreds of books and check them out.
We described the impact of missing libraries in conversations with policy makers, fighting alongside New York State United Teachers and the AFT for the resources we needed. We spent hours lobbying state legislators about the impact of underfunding in a district where 75 to 80 percent of the families live in poverty.
We told lawmakers what it’s like to have just one school psychologist for every 900 students, and one social worker for every 2,000. What happens when you have a child with suicidal ideation and no psychologist or social worker in the building? Social workers are split among five different buildings, psychologists split among three. What if there are children in crisis in multiple buildings?
We described pandemic scenarios when school was remote and families shared one cellphone among five or six people, each child trying to do their homework on the tiny screen. “You can sit through language arts, but you have to skip math because Johnny’s got the cell phone for that; he’s struggling in math,” parents would tell their children. “And Mom has a meeting at 12, so you can’t attend your 12 o’clock.”
Social workers are split among five different buildings, psychologists split among three. What if there are children in crisis in multiple buildings?
The union brought in educators from across the state to tell legislators all sorts of real-life stories like these, and we joined the AFT to push for the American Rescue Plan, so federal funds could boost our districts’ efforts. We even hosted a car caravan with signs encouraging the community to contact U.S. senators and representatives to vote “yes” on the HEROES Act to bring additional COVID-19 relief funding.
Today, those libraries are back in place. We have more funding for school psychologists, social workers and counselors. And the American Rescue Plan has helped us open more summer school academies and grow and resource our community schools. We’ve even brought back students who graduated from our union-run “Grow Your Own” teaching program for students in grades 7–12 who are interested in becoming teachers. The students we brought back were enrolled in teacher preparation programs in college; they had paid internships working with summer school teachers for the past two years.
We still have a long way to go, and we will continue to use our collective voice to advocate for what our students need. All educators should have the tools they need to provide our children with the best education possible. Every kindergarten teacher should have more than purple crayons on the first day of school.
Samantha Rosado-Ciriello, a former elementary school teacher, is president of the Yonkers Federation of Teachers.
