This time of year is when we really need to stretch our hard-earned teaching dollars as far as they will go. It’s when we have to decide how necessary buying the organic cleaner is and if we can get away with cutting the half sheets of lined paper we made earlier in half again. To help you out, these are some tried and true money saving hacks that will get you through the holiday season with a couple extra dollars in your pocket. Just a couple.

Pencil hack:

Students are always jacking my stuff. Their favorite thing to take from me are my pencils. Some other teachers have sworn by this trick: buy golf pencils and lend those out to students. Students don’t like them and will generally leave them in your classroom. I haven’t done this yet, but if I did, I would get the ones pictured below because they have erasers. I’m not that savage. Speaking of savage… I befriended a first year teacher who went to IKEA a few times just to take their little golf pencils! I found one of these IKEA pencils on the ground on campus and had a laugh.  I DO NOT RECOMMEND stealing, but hey, her kids had pencils.

Pen hack:

Tape a spoon or something else to the pen. My friend said that is how he keeps costs down in his classroom. He  buys the big 60 pack of pens at the beginning of the year, puts spoons on 10 at a time, and says that it makes the pens last about twice as long. I do this as well and I would say that it helps keep those pens in the classroom a bit longer and you can reuse the spoons when the pens run out of ink.  It’s not perfect, but it could save you some money!  This year, I taped little flags on my pens with my name on it. It worked fairly well, but the flags were not as sturdy as the spoons. Also, the kids started to smack each other in the nose with the flags. I teach high schoolers, by the way.

This is the go-to pen of every teacher that I know. I don’t use this pen for my personal use in the classroom, but it is the pen I provide my students. You can get fancy with your personal “teacher pen”, but I wouldn’t waste my time or money on the classroom pens.

Definitely share your own pen and pencil hacks below and stay tuned for more hacks!

Class dismissed!