Some of this may be hard for you to believe. I promise it’s true. These things really do happen outside the walls of your house.
I was a teacher in St. Louis city for two years; I then took a job at Cahokia High School for two years. Sometime in there, I bought my first fountain pen. I did not do it out of choice; I was forced into it by my own bleeding heart.
When you’re teaching in the city, many of your clientele do not want to be there. They do not look forward to going to school; they don’t want to learn what you have to teach them. Some do! But a lot of them (a vocal minority, we’ll say) do not.
This means that they regularly need to be supplied with materials. I kept a class full of notebooks and folders, one of each for every student. They weren’t allowed to take them out of the room, because things that leave the room rarely make it back. This includes writing utensils.
As a teacher buying notebooks and folders for every student, you can imagine my distress when a student would lack something to write with. At the beginning of the year, I purchased many pencils as well. Whenever a student didn’t have a pencil, I would give that student something to write with.
On a side note, some teachers in this kind of environment think up interesting ways to avoid losing things. One teacher attached a bathroom pass to a toilet seat. Another teacher wrote on all her pencils, “This pencil was stolen from Mrs. ____.”
I wasn’t as wise. Every time a student needed something to write with, I forked over a pencil. I did try buying a hundred golf pencils one year, thinking no one would actually want to take a golf pencil. They lasted a couple months.
It got so bad that I went a few days without a writing utensil. I figured they needed it more than I did. I actually gave away everything I had to write with! What was I thinking?
It was time for a change. I had to buy something that, no matter what I was thinking at the moment, I would NEVER give to a student. Something they couldn’t even WRITE with. Enter the fountain pen (pictured below).
While I bought the fountain pen under duress, you will enjoy it! It’s fun to write with, and looks cool. You won’t lose them as much since they’re worth more than a regular pencil or pen. So, as I’ve been saying in class lately: take notes with your own hand in your best handwriting!
Mr. Klunick Tutoring 
I fell into the same bleeding-heart teacher trap. I insisted that my students write in blue or black ink, and grade with red. I ended up buying a couple packages of the Bic crystal ballpoints and putting stickers on all of them: Stolen from Dr. Stigdon.
They all disappeared. I bought more. They exited my classroom just as speedily. It became a badge of honor among the upperclassmen to show off their ill-gotten goods at the lunch table in front of the awestruck Middle Schoolers I did not teach, but who were nevertheless terrified of me.
One day I stopped. These were ostensibly Christian kids from families who were choosing to send their kleptomaniacal progeny to a private school. I removed the pens that were left and inaugurated a new policy. When it’s time to start writing or grading, you have 15 seconds to produce the correct-colored writing instrument. Your grade drops by one letter for every additional 15 seconds I have to wait. If a student didn’t have a pen, they got a loaner (which I collected at the end of class) and a 0 for the assignment. Fortunately, I kept a box of extra-credit essay prompts written on folded 3×5 cards so the kids could defray some of the damage to their GPA.
I used fountain pens as an incentive. Several of my pen pals had collections stretching into the dozens or even hundreds. I asked them to send me the pens and ink they no longer used or wanted. Students who maintained an A for the entire semester earned their own fountain pen and could write with whichever color of ink they wanted from my donation box. Maintaining an A for both semesters bought them a bottle of ink. Kids who had previously seemed incapable of keeping track of cheap, plastic ballpoints now fiercely and protectively clutched their own pen with a diligence that would shame most mothers of newborns. They learned pen care and cleaning. After school would sometimes find a group of them clustered around my desk as I showed how to effect adjustments and minor repairs. I got emails over the summer asking for troubleshooting tips and tricks.
Did it work on all of my students? Sadly, no, but the many it did motivate made this worth the effort. As my stash of extra pens diminished, I occasionally purchased a reliable, inexpensive fountain pen for a student who really wanted a pen, but found nothing suitable in the box. It was a small price to pay for something that had changed the culture of my classroom and our tiny school.
To these kids, the pens were more than just a writing instrument. They had value. They were earned. Having a fountain pen was a palpable display of effort and accomplishment. These students were proud of their pens and proud of themselves. And rightly so.
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