Parenting
Classroom battle lines being drawn on the stationery front
This piece originally appeared in The Globe and Mail and Global News.
Post-it notes with emojis. Locker magnets that resemble pizza and poop. Pencil boxes featuring T.rex. These are some of the many back-to-school items currently sitting on the shelves of a Wal-Mart store in Toronto.
But Rhonda Johnson, of Unionville, Ont., skipped all of that during a recent visit as she was browsing through the store with her nine-year-old son, Jahziah.
"I am the type of parent who buys something that is going to be functional and serve its purpose," she says. "It's going to be plain. It's not going to be glittery."