School portraits / A school post office prepares to open
Don’t do the envelope math for an eight-year-old
Before the post office opens, envelopes need prices. Just don’t help with the numbers.
Whether to sell envelopes in packs of five or ten never keeps adults awake. You buy a box, use two, and leave the rest in a drawer until the glue turns yellow. For an eight-year-old opening a post office, however, the packaging matters. Do customers want five envelopes or ten? And should a larger envelope cost more than a small one, and why?
At City and Country School, third graders run the post office and survey people for advice. Lower school director Jane Clarke was meeting with teacher Megan Lau when a survey crew arrived with pricing questions. They wanted to know how many envelopes to stock, how to bundle them, and what prices made sense.
As the crew debated the pricing, one boy turned to his partner with sudden passion: “Wait, wait, let me do the math!” Clarke watched with delight, and you can understand why. Grown-ups spend years coaxing children toward sums. Put five envelopes versus ten on the counter, and arithmetic is suddenly something you defend from your partner.