It does not matter what age, gender or subject you teach: Every classroom needs tissues. Boys with dripping sweaty faces enter your classroom after a game of PE; give them a tissue to wipe their brows. A pen leaks all over the desk and a child? Grab a tissue and get them wiping. Your board rubber has lost its erasing super-powers? A tissue will do the job. Sneezing children? Spilt water bottles? Nose bleed? The list is genuinely endless....
Some teachers steal toilet roll from the bathrooms but I find a box of Tesco Value Tissues (approx. 19p) each half-term does the trick best. A 19p investment that brings a hundred thank-yous.
And before someone says that giving out tissues teaches children to rely on you, I would like to point out the number of times I've had students cry in my room. And I'm talking big, burly 18-year old boys who beg me never to say that they cried. This is not the time to berate them for their lack of tissue-carrying habits. Now is the time to take the Tesco Values from the desk, quietly place it at their side and just wait. Sometimes we teach responsibility and sometimes we must take responsibility.
