Philly-area teachers are counting on Amazon wish lists and crowdfunding for classroom supplies

Like many teachers, Micaela Pozo Castro typically shells out a few hundred dollars to get her classroom up and running early in the school year.

This year, however, her costs were defrayed in part due to the generosity of strangers.

Last month, the 24-year-old high school math teacher posted her Amazon wish list to Philaqueens, a popular Facebook group for local women. Online wish lists and other crowdfunding options have become a popular tool for educators like Castro who want to save on classroom supplies, but the algebra and precalculus teacher had shared a prior year’s list with only relatives and friends.

In August, 10 strangers bought a total of $150 worth of supplies — everything from storage cubes to headphones to the brainteaser game Kanoodle.

“I was like, ‘Oh, my God,’” said Castro, who is in her third year at a school in Bridesburg. (Several teachers preferred not to have the name of their school published due to safety concerns or their administration’s policies.)

She thinks the increased visibility of wish lists have made people more aware of how much teachers have to spend every year. The wish lists are ever more critical, several local teachers said, as the cost of supplies has increased while teacher salaries have not kept up with inflation.

“We really do need the support of everyone to make our classroom nice,” she said.

Megan Connell, an art teacher in Delaware County, created a wish list for the first time this year.

“It’s been awesome to see the support,” said the 33-year-old. “A lot of my family and friends have been able to purchase the things off of my wish list,” accounting for more than half of the items she asked for.

Connell said her goal is to spend less than $100 of her own money, far less than the $300 to $400 she’s spent at the start of previous school years.

At a different Delaware County school, high school English teacher Jeana Schreiber first shared an Amazon wish list before returning to the classroom at the height of COVID. That first year, the 29-year-old said, she got the most help, and aid has fallen off in the years since. But she’s become more resourceful.

“I’ve gotten a little bit smarter about how I spend my money so it’s not that bad. I leverage Target’s back-to-school sales” and stockpile gift cards, she said. “The price has gone up but I wouldn’t say I recognize it” due to other cost-saving measures.

The wish list “is still worth it,” she said. “As long as I put it out there, I know I tried to get my materials for my kids.”

Michelle Bergantz, a music teacher at Watson Comly Elementary in Northeast Philadelphia, has made a classroom Amazon wish list for several years running, publicizing it on her X account and to friends and family on Facebook to get help equipping her classroom.

Among the veteran teacher’s asks: handbells, storage bins, music posters, stickers, a laminator — things her school’s budget doesn’t stretch to pay for and the $200 allotment the Philadelphia School District provides doesn’t cover.

“Comly’s been good with some of the basics, but I’m a specialist teacher. Parents will send in things like pencils and markers and crayons, but kids don’t carry that stuff around with them all day. It’s not something you think a specialist teacher needs, but we do,” Bergantz said.

As a teacher in an underresourced district, it’s a given that she’ll have to spend heavily out of her own pocket, Bergantz said. (At one district school where she used to teach, Bergantz had no budget for supplies other than two reams of paper a month.) She spent $2,500 out of pocket last school year, but with prices rising and Bergantz coping with more demands on her personal budget — home repairs and starting a doctoral program — she felt compelled to find whatever help she could to supply her classroom.

She’s never gotten much interest before, but this time, a social media influencer with a teacher mom saw Bergantz’s post — with the #clearthelists hashtag — on X and amplified it. People she’s never met bought a few items from Bergantz’s wish list, including wipeable pouches that students can slip worksheets in and mark up with dry-erase markers so Bergantz doesn’t have to make hundreds of copies.

“It’s been invaluable,” Bergantz said. “I have 619 students, and every little bit helps. Everything someone else buys is something I don’t have to buy myself.”