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"Flowers are red, young man, green leaves are green; there’s no need to see flowers any other way than the way they always have been seen." - Writer/singer Harry Chapin

School’s almost over; it’s time to invest in next year.

We all can help teachers who broaden the minds and aspirations of children, especially those with special needs.

Gather “un-usables” and give them to Exceptional Student Education (ESE) Centers through a Teacher Supply Depot (TSD).

Tripled rate 
You’ll find TSDs mainly in the South, where public education seems to rank well behind fried foods and NASCAR. States with high jobless rates for people with disabilities (PWD) are primarily in the South.

Assistance needed for ESE students is underscored by the 2006 Cornell University Disability Statistics Center. It shows the percentage of working-age PWD employed full-time/full-year was only 21.7 percent, with median annual earnings of $30,000, and a poverty rate of 25.3 percent. Conversely, the poverty rate of working-age people without disabilities was 9.2 percent.

All about EVE
States such as Tennessee and Florida have ESE centers getting help from TSDs. According to Christine Buckley, teachers take materials contributed by individuals and businesses and make useful projects.

In1999, Buckley was an Education, Volunteer Service, and Employment (EVE) Awards finalist in Jacksonville, Fla., in the education category as TSD coordinator for the Duval County (Fla.) School Board. She developed the TSD to provide materials for projects, student incentives, and hands-on instruction using items that would’ve gone to the landfill. Her “innovative recycling program” won a top award from the Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection.

She has been a vice president/organization for the Florida Parent Teachers Association and is a member of the Mandarin Lions Club.

Past $20 million
TSD items are FREE to public school teachers and include art, office, paper, and science supplies, student incentives, overruns, punch-outs, end cuts, and many other materials. 

The TSD is a joint effort of the Duval County Public Schools' Community Involvement Office Warehousing Division and Duval County Council of PTAs/PTSAs.

Better balance
Here are some projects made by teachers of ESE students created from “junk.”

• A teacher took 6-foot, heavy-duty cardboard tubes and cut them lengthwise in half. Students developed better coordination walking the “beam.” They also used fan blade cleaner extension poles to hold onto to increase balance.
• With that concept and only 1-foot-long pieces, students step from "stone" to "stone" while maintaining balance.
• Film canisters and several small manipulative pieces are used by the trainable mentally handicapped for processing skills. Students remove the lid, insert different pieces, and put the lid back.

Just a sampling
Buckley emphasizes, “These are just a sampling of the hundreds of educational tools created with reusable materials found at the Teacher Supply Depot.”

So, assisting a TSD provides a way to have children accomplish more and be able to say ...
There are so many colors in the rainbow, so many colors in the morning sun, so many colors in the flower, and I see every one.

In his wheelchair in Jacksonville, FL, Herb Drill heads Able Me & Associates. His e-mail address is herbdrill@ableme.com. He has Muscular Dystrophy.