What Credit Crunch?

Day Six:

In my class students are required to take notes in a spiral notebook or composition book. Places like Staples or Office Depot put school supplies on sale well before my students even start school, so they are unable to know what they’ll need or take advantage of the sales.

Knowing this, each year I’ll buy a slew of packets of lined paper and notebooks to help my students get the sale prices while also saving their folks a trip to the said supply stores. Over the last couple of days there have been a number of students that needed to purchase a notebook from me; the students wind up paying a whopping 25 cents. (By the way, I only ‘charge’ what I pay and use the recoupment to purchase more supplies for next year’s bunch.)

If a student doesn’t have a quarter on them I simply ask them to pay later, but I don’t really enforce this. In fact, whenever this happens I consider it a quarter lost, but that’s okay because it’s for a good cause.

Suffice it to say that this good cause cost a lot of quarters this week.

But then came today.

Like I said, I don’t keep track of who owes a quarter, but I’m convinced that everyone of my students that bought on credit cleared their balance today. I was so impressed period after period today as students from each class made good on their purchase promise and handed in quarters.

I was proud of them.
I was inspired by their integrity.
I was hopeful for a financial future that such honesty can bear.

Today I learned that I have some pretty sweet students.

Motivated by the money-mindedness of my students…J.C. León