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In an ideal world, there would be plenty of money to give teachers the supplies they need to teach and to provide them with the training they need to develop as professionals. In lieu of this perfect world, though, the more important component is supplies.

A school without paper is like a car without oil... yet it happens all the time. Many urban districts are chronically out of paper, and many schools in general run out of paper towards the end of the year because the budget has run out.

Without paper, all kinds of wonderful teaching methods become impossible. You can't give your students documents to read, you can't provide carefully worded and written instructions, and you can't easily reproduce graphic ogranizers for your students to fill in.

In the absence of supplementary documents, lectures or textbooks need to rise to the occassion. Without written instructions, a teacher will need to constantly re-clarify his or her statements as each student tunes in individually. Graphic ogranizers can be drawn on the board or a transparency, but a lot of time is lost as students carefully reproduce it in their notebooks.

Technology is another area where the need for supplies clearly trumps the need for training. Modern computers create all kinds of possibilities for the classroom. Teachers can create websites and students can create collaborative projects on wikispaces. Students can engage in producing multimeda - podcasts and short movies.

None of this is possible without computers, though. Much of it is also impossible with old computers. If a computer is seven or eight years old and only has a word processor and an internet browser, students aren't going to be able to create fancy multimedia projects. That old internet browser might not even be able to render modern websites, properly formatted in CSS, so even the most rudimentary internet projects become difficult!

These resources can only be had with the use of cold hard cash. Teacher training and development, on the other hand, doesn't have to cost anything. Many teachers tune out the professional development courses they are forced to take.

They are more likely to take something to heart if it comes from someone they trust - a co-worker. Rather than waste thousands of dollars on workshops and conferences, departments should focus on encouraging collaboration among its faculty.

It would be nice to have enough money to cover all of the expenses of education. Until that happens, focus on getting the basic resources - paper, supplemental resources, and modern computers.

Learn more about this author, B. Rock.
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