Amelie Krikorian; Getty Images; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI
In 2022, Amelie Krikorian bought books, rugs, chocolate, paint, flashcards, beads, and more for her students and classroom with her own money.
She spent at least $4,000 on her fifth-grade students and room, based on documentation shared with Business Insider. Krikorian is just one of many teachers who feel the need to dip into their own wallets.
"Teachers who want to make elementary school a positive and enriching experience do feel pressure to spend their own money," she told BI.
Krikorian, who has since left the education field, said teachers shouldn't have to spend their own money on their classrooms. However, survey results show a lot of teachers do buy supplies out of their own pockets. The National Teacher and Principal Survey shows around 94% of teachers "spent any of their own money on classroom supplies without reimbursement during the 2019–20 school year." The average among teachers who spent their own money was $459.
"Teachers do feel a lot of pressure to spend their own money," Krikorian said, adding that there are "a lot of expectations that the kids are going to be able to take home projects and things that they could share with their parents in elementary school." And when schools don't supply all the materials, teachers often step up.
Krikorian resigned from teaching in 2023 following a particularly difficult incident with a student, but long hours and constant demands also played a role. "I would get to school at 8 o'clock in the morning," Krikorian said. "I would often not leave until 6, and I would have two hours more of work to do after dinner. I never had a weekend free. I never felt like I could go and do anything or visit anybody."
Another reason was spending money out of pocket as a teacher. "For one thing, I was discouraged at having to spend about 10% of my take home pay to be able to do my job properly," she said in a follow-up email. "For another, teachers who would not spend their own money would borrow my materials and often not return them or return them damaged."
For enrichment purposes over the years, Krikorian "bought books that enabled the kids to do additional reading about what we were doing in history and science," she said.
Krikorian thinks that schools and districts can do more to support teachers. "There should be a budget for each classroom," Krikorian said, noting that even if the people who come up with school budgets can offer "at least a couple hundred every year, and you can gradually build up your stock of library books and other things."
Krikorian said she bought wall decals during her teaching career to make the room more cheerful, and she said it all adds up. She said teachers have to decorate their rooms because the classroom could be a "cement, concrete, brick box, and it's painted a really ugly color, and you want to brighten it up." She said teachers want to make these rooms welcoming and cheerful.
"You get banners that say, 'Welcome to my classroom,' and you buy a happy birthday chart and put the kids' names on it, and you choose one of the chalkboards in your room and put student work above it so that the students can hang up the things they're proud of, and it all adds up," Krikorian said.
She found she had to buy materials for crafts; she recalled a limited supply of construction paper in the school storage. She recalled buying materials, such as beads for necklaces when the students were learning about ancient Egypt.
"I bought papyrus, so they were able to make bookmarks with their Egyptian characters on it," she added.
She said even though she tended to buy books for the classroom secondhand, this added up. Krikorian said the classroom library is particularly important, and she suggested to teachers who are considering buying items out of pocket to buy books secondhand from eBay, Amazon, and yard sales.
Meanwhile, she said teachers have to buy craft materials as new. "I bought a lot through Amazon," she said. "I looked for things that were discounted and on sale at Walmart and Target and just made do wherever I could."
Krikorian said that without her husband's income, she wouldn't have been able to spend as much on her classroom. "If we had been needing my income to live, if we had been needing it for budgetary purposes, I would not have been able to spend that much," she said.
How much money do you have to spend out of pocket at your job? Reach out to this reporter to share at mhoff@businessinsider.com.
