This autumn, Tes reported that the vast majority of teachers were having to pay for essential classroom supplies themselves because their schools lacked sufficient funds.

Today, teacher and Twitter user @MrEFinch asked the following question:

And so, @MrEFinch began by offering up some ridiculous spending of his own:

His technological investment was, however, immediately trumped by someone else’s offer:

However, if this teacher thought that the sacrifice of a Christmas gift would allow her to rest on her altruistic laurels, she was wrong. A big-screen TV, after all, is very well and generous, but it does not require the effort of, say, sourcing, purchasing and disassembling a genuine Second World War artefact.

Another teacher bought a second-hand sofa, explaining:

The bright side of spending one’s own money on classroom resources is, of course, the glow of self-sacrifice. Nothing quite equals the knowledge that one is, without a doubt, a superior human being. A superior human being capable of, surely, anything at all. Take, for example, this teacher, who spent his own money on…

A number of responses (74 as this was being written) referred to items that one might expect to be covered by school budgets, namely paper, books, pens, pencils and glue sticks.

Unfortunately, some pupils were far from bowled over by their teacher’s generosity:

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