Teachers get sad lesson in quest for pencils

High school teacher Rachel Tevlin stocks up on notebooks for her students in Mountain View, Calif. on Saturday, Aug. 3, 2013. High school teacher Rachel Tevlin stocks up on notebooks for her students in Mountain View, Calif. on Saturday, Aug. 3, 2013. Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Teachers get sad lesson in quest for pencils 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

Rachel Tevlin woke up Saturday with the high hopes of a little kid on Christmas morning.

It was - at least at one big-box office supply store - Teacher Appreciation Day.

To the geography and computer skills teacher at Fremont's Mission San Jose High School, that meant one thing: free stuff.

Visions of free folders and pencils and pens danced in her head. Each of the last few years, Tevlin mapped out a route from one of the chain's stores to the next, picking up a goody bag full of supplies she could use for her students.

The stores gave her a three-hour window for the giveaways, from 9 a.m. to noon, and offered other discounts through the day or weekend.

By Friday night, Tevlin had mapped out nine stores on a 93-mile route from Union City to Redwood City, looping south through Mountain View, San Jose and then east to Pleasanton and Livermore.

It might sound crazy to outsiders adding up the gas bill versus some free pencils and erasers. But she wasn't the only teacher doing it.

A couple of San Jose teachers started calling it the Running of the Teachers, creating a Facebook event page and urging fellow instructors to carpool to get the freebies.

From teachers' pockets

The idea was not just to stock up on supplies for the school year, but to raise awareness of how much of their own money teachers have to spend to make up for classroom shortages.

When she worked as a database analyst for tech companies, Tevlin was used to having whatever she needed to do her job. LED projector? Had one. Computers? Check. Pens, paper, printers? Of course.

Now, all that's a luxury, said Tevlin, 42. "Even with what parents provide, we're still strapped," she said.

At the end of each school year, Tevlin asks students to give her their notebooks so she can rip out unused pages for the next year.

So on Saturday, at 9:03 a.m., she pulled into the Union City store parking lot full of anticipation in her quest to hit nine stores for nine bulging goody bags.

The doors open

As the glass doors slid open, she prepared to bask in appreciation. In years past, there were tables of coffee, breakfast treats and the glorious bags.

Oh, store clerks said. We need to go find the bags in the back.

It was a minor setback, a delay made a bit worse by the lack of food or beverages.

So she waited. Union City third-grade teacher Karen Lance was waiting, too.

"I always come for the free stuff," Lance said. "We have to make do with what we get.

"No matter what you do, there's something you need."

The minutes ticked by. Tevlin worried she wouldn't make it to the nine stores. She wandered the aisles and decided to break the event's "no shopping until after noon" rule, grabbing some 1-cent notebooks that came with any $5 purchase, a deal available to all customers.

The letdown

At 9:30, the store manager appeared with a cardboard box, cut it open and pulled out a tote bag. An empty tote bag.

"Here you go," the manager said. "We have a book of discount coupons, too. I need to go find them."

Tevlin looked at her flat tote bag, the kind the store sold for a few dollars at the cash registers.

She opted not to wait for the coupon book, deciding store No. 1 must have missed the annual "appreciation" memo. She headed for store No. 2.

In Redwood City, the tote bags were already on display. Flat and empty.

Store clerks asked for her teacher ID and inspected it.

"Here's your bag," they said brightly. "And coupons!"

Tevlin was worried. Seven stores to go. Would it be more of the same? "I don't need to collect bags," she said sadly.

But she still had a little faith and headed south.

Chocolate consolation

Mountain View had made an effort. There was a bowl of bite-size chocolate bars on a table next to the flat tote bags and coupon books.

Tevlin was a bit philosophical.

"I think in some ways, it makes even more of a point," she said.

Perhaps even the stores know that teachers will dip into their wallets no matter what to make sure their students have what they need, Tevlin said.

"We have to buy this stuff whether we want to or not," she said. "The freebies made it bearable."

Tevlin sighed, grabbed a cart and started shopping, abandoning her route and her visions of a carload of free rulers, calculators and paper clips.

The store manager said she could buy a few extra 1-cent notebooks beyond the limit of five and noted she would get a 25 percent discount in appreciation for being a teacher.

Half an hour later, Tevlin pushed the full cart to her car and loaded boxes and tote bags, which were now full of notebooks, pens, markers and other supplies.

She had spent $207.39. She had gotten nothing for free.