How to donate teaching supplies

November 24, 2016 8:46 AM

A family member is retiring from a decades long teaching career. They'd like to donate the large collection of teaching material that they've accumulated over the years. How can they do this efficiently and to places and teachers who need the items.

They taught middle school science so many of the items pertain to that. There are also lots of general items as well.

They are pretty unhappy with how they were treated in their own school system and are thus not interested in their local schools.

posted by sciencegeek to Grab Bag (8 answers total)

Reach out to local homeschooling groups. Some will have book fairs where materials are sold and traded, or be willing to serve as a clearinghouse for the lot.
posted by MonkeyToes at 9:04 AM on November 24, 2016

Check out Donors Choose for wishlists posted by teachers across the U.S.
posted by gateau at 9:11 AM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

If you have any universities with teacher training programs in the area, the professors there are usually well connected with energetic newer teachers in your area who often are short on supplies and resources, or are so new that they don't have much stuff yet. See if you can find contact info for education professors who work in science education.
posted by chr1sb0y at 9:20 AM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

If I had this problem, I would either go to my local Indigenous reservation school and donate it there. Or, I would take it to the most underfunded middle school in my nearest urban area.

Or! Do you have a juvenile jail in town? Those places never get the stuff they're supposed to from the government. And they have schools for those kids inside.
posted by RedEmma at 10:03 AM on November 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

Oh good heavens! I live in a place where underpaid teachers spend their own money on school supplies and frequently request donations from parents. Memail me a list and I'll see what they can use. My son is just in elementary school but someone I had dinner with today is a retired middle school science teacher and we discussed exactly this and she'll know where to put the stuff.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 4:53 PM on November 24, 2016

Response by poster: There are too many supplies to list!
posted by sciencegeek at 3:14 AM on November 25, 2016

Gently, not listing supplies mean that you are just giving the sorting/chucking job to somebody else.
posted by freethefeet at 5:26 PM on November 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: There's a degree of hoarding involved here. Not extreme, but enough that the process of getting rid of things is emotionally difficult for the person they belong to. We'd like this process to be as easy as possible. Making an inventory is not something that is going to make the process easy.
posted by sciencegeek at 4:46 PM on November 26, 2016