I thought it was a typo on the school supply list.

Did my child really need 60 Ticonderoga pencils for fifth grade? But it wasn't a mistake: The list did specify three packs of 20 No. 2 pencils, in that brand. I look forward to the "War and Peace"-length manuscript he must be bringing home after burning through nearly two pencils a week for nine months.

But five dozen pencils don't seem as excessive as the 24 glue sticks required per kindergartner in several districts across the country.

In a class of 20 students, that's 480 glue sticks. For historical perspective: It took children raised in the '80s a few squiggly lines of Elmer's glue to paste our construction paper projects together. And several children had leftovers to snack on.

So why are parents now expected to supply a metric ton of glue and an acre of forest's worth of pencils for elementary schools?

Lisa Goodgame, a communications associate with the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin, Texas, posed the sticky question about glue sticks on her Facebook page while researching the rising cost of school supplies and extracurricular fees in public schools. The response she heard most frequently was that children rarely replaced the caps after using a glue stick, which meant many dried out very quickly.

It runs counter to our mass-consumption, throw-away culture, but perhaps the better lesson to teach young children is to replace the cap.

The same can be said for pencils. By fifth grade, one should learn to get by on fewer than 60 pencils in a year.

Part of the explanation may also be the shift to communal supplies in younger grades. The excess by some families helps cover those unable to buy most of the items on the list.

The price of supplies is not insignificant. The costs of a "free" public education have risen every year since 2007. Huntington Bank's annual "Backpack Index" tracks the cost of school supplies and extracurricular activities in the six states it serves (Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky). Since the bank began tracking these numbers eight years ago, elementary school costs have increased by 85 percent.

According to this year's Backpack Index, parents of an elementary student will pay an average of $649 this year. For high schoolers, the cost rose 9 percent from last year to $1,402.

School supply lists, and the reactions to them, speak to the rising income inequality and financial pressure on middle-class families in America. There is some parental resentment that crops up as costs continue to rise, along with the number of economically disadvantaged children in public schools.

Meanwhile, the amount that many states spend per pupil has either stayed steady or decreased since the 2008 recession. At least 35 states provided less funding per student for the 2013-14 school year than they did before the recession hit, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. This is despite the fact that many states have had modest increases in tax revenues.

So, the lists have gotten longer, more brand-specific and include more high-end items, such as flash drives and earbuds, even for grade schoolers.

Goodgame said she priced out all the items on the fourth-grade supply list in the Austin Independent School District. When a brand wasn't specified, she chose the cheapest option.

The total was $175.

"I was appalled," she said. "If you have two children, you're spending upwards of $300, and that doesn't include all the other school-related expenses, like uniforms for sports and music instrument rentals."

A study by Deloitte released last month found that 39 percent of responders plan to reuse some of last year's school items rather than purchasing everything new. That's a significant increase from 26 percent in 2011.

Other parents vented their supply list angst online.

"My kids' lists are front AND back of a paper!" one parent wrote. She says they are asked to bring three reams of white computer paper, three reams of colored paper, two boxes of Ziploc bags, paint shirts, hand sanitizer, baby wipes and hand soap for the classrooms.

Another supply list asked for 100 sharpened pencils from each student. I'm not sure if they were planning on having the students build a raft or fashion survival tools with all those writing utensils.

The stockpiles of glue sparked the most fury.

"Don't even get me started," one parent posted. "The kindergarten list called for 28, yes TWENTY-EIGHT, Elmer's glue sticks AND four large bottles of Elmer's school glue, white only." There's a mathematical proof of this paste burden: With approximately 20 children per kindergarten class, with six classes at their school, that's 3,360 glue sticks and 480 bottles of glue.

Someone pass the 200-count hypoallergenic Scotties, please.

People knew there was something rotten festering in police departments and municipalities around the St. Louis area before Ferguson erupted in protests a year ago.

Racism and segregation have long been the wallpaper of our region. It is a lived reality for many residents. Police shootings happened before Michael Brown was killed, and have continued after.

But the way we looked at them changed -- first locally, then nationally.

A fundamental part of that shift has come from the activism of young people, many of whom never considered themselves activists before.

Johnetta Elzie, 25, is one of those people. She and others attracted large followings on Twitter and Instagram documenting what was happening in the days and months after Brown was shot. Social media activists took on a powerful role by bringing cases of injustice to light, circulating them broadly and pushing back on police narratives. They no longer relied on traditional media to tell their stories.

"Police violence is part of the national conversation in a way that we haven't seen in my generation," she said. The sustained attention has prompted a measure of change.

The Justice Department exposed corrupt and racist practices in the police department and courts in Ferguson, including a system of targeting black residents for traffic violations and excessive fines. Reforms were implemented.

The police chief left; the municipal court judge resigned.

Activists with the Organization for Black Struggle tracked the bills in the Missouri state legislature and lobbied elected officials. Media organizations began documenting every person killed by the police.

"Everything about the structure in St. Louis is just as corrupt as it was (last) August," Elzie said. "I know we can't undo hundreds of years of systematic oppression in less than a year."

But people who didn't know they had any power discovered they did. She said an effort to recall the mayor in Ferguson would have been unthinkable before.

There's an informal national network of activists now, with a system in place to respond to allegations of police brutality when they arise. That network formed new alliances, and created support systems that didn't exist before.

Rasheen Aldridge, 21, had been active in protests and politics before Brown was shot. He is the youngest member on the Ferguson Commission appointed by the governor.

"I have to use my anger in a different way," Aldridge said. He wants to focus on policies that could benefit different communities. He's pushing for greater transparency: things like civilian oversight to investigate certain police actions. But he sees racial injustice as intrinsically tied to economic injustice.

"Things have gotten a little better," he said. "For a long time, when things have been horrible and you need a complete overhaul -- it's going to take time for it to really kick in," he said.

Protests were never going to solve the problems endemic to our region or nation. They were an attempt to draw attention to these problems and to the intensity of frustration and anger they caused.

Both Elzie and Aldridge said they are hopeful about the future. Elzie believes there will be a change in the way policing happens in St. Louis and across the country. She's not sure when, but she knows she's committed to that struggle for her lifetime.

Aldridge said people who had never organized, who had never found an effective way to challenge the system, discovered a way.

"Finally having a voice makes me hopeful," he said.

Ferguson changed us. It changed our awareness, conversations and policies.

It impacted a generation of young people, who now feel empowered to make the world a better place.

That should make the rest of us hopeful, too.

I worried about all the wrong things when my children were in preschool.

I came to this realization after spending four months observing preschool teachers toiling through a difficult year with a few hard-to-manage students.

Eight years ago, my husband and I were entrenched in raising preschoolers. The 0- to-6-year-old dogma was drilled into us: This is peak brain-development time. Their academic progress -- along with their physical safety, health and general happiness -- consumed much of my attention during those preschool years.

The latest research, however, suggests that the "soft skills" of social and emotional development are strongly correlated with long-term academic and life success.

A study published last month in the American Journal of Public Health found that kindergarten teachers' assessments of their students' social competencies were a powerful predictor of the likelihood of a range of outcomes down the road. Even after accounting for factors such as poverty, race, family stress and neighborhood crime, a child's "non-cognitive" skills -- such as self-regulation and being able to get along with others -- were correlated to his or her odds of graduating high school and college, committing a crime, securing gainful employment, and having mental health or substance-abuse issues later in life.

Preschool teachers have likely always known the importance of social skills, but parents may have underestimated it. Years of headlines screaming about brain development and "Einstein" learning systems for babies shifted our attention to academic skills.

Like so many parents do, I got caught up in the learning that is easiest to measure. How well were they reading? Did they understand basic math concepts? How well did they write their names? How far along were their gross and fine motor skills?

I embraced perhaps the most plaintive middle class vexation: Were they being challenged enough?

My knowledge of what happens in a preschool classroom was limited to the parties, the teacher conferences and chats during the daily drop-off and pickup.

Years later, after observing a classroom for hours at a time over a period of four months, I gained new insight. When I watched Christine Grosch and Paula Ayers of St. Louis' University City Children's Center run their class, I saw skirmishes and victories that aren't as easily measured as the progression on a reading chart.

Here is what I saw Grosch and Ayers focus on.

They narrated a lot of what they were presently doing, what they saw around them and what would happen next. They asked the children to wonder aloud, as well. Grosch sang often. Both teachers read aloud frequently and with exaggerated emotion.

They asked their students a lot of questions: What did you like best? What did you do? What happened in that story? What was that song about?

All of this talking is beneficial: Preschoolers learn five to six words a day, and teachers are introducing new words constantly.

Ayers and Grosch didn't jump in and do things for their students. They would brainstorm with them to solve problems and praise a child for figuring something out on his or her own.

"It's important to strike a balance between 'doing' and 'not doing,'" Grosch explained to me. "Sometimes 'not doing' is just as important as intervening."

Grosch and Ayers talked aloud in situations where a child's self-control was tested. They played board games and card games that required taking turns and following rules.

They were often over-the-top in their enthusiasm.

They had simple, step-by-step problem-solving procedures in place, and prompted students as needed: How can we solve this? What do you need to make this happen? Did you talk to the other person?

They hugged or carried or had children in their laps constantly.

They gave shy kids words like "Can I play with you?" to use when they wanted to join other children.

When a child got hurt, they would ask the offender what he or she could do to help the other child feel better. They encouraged the same thing when a classmate was sad or crying. They pointed out the feelings of characters in books.

Grosch and Ayers gave the children opportunities to cut, color, paste, paint and play. Kids were expected to put their own coats on and hang them up; go to the bathroom on their own and wash their hands; serve themselves snacks and eat them neatly.

Watching the day-to-day mechanisms of early childhood education made me wish I had focused my attention differently.

When my own kids were 3 and 4, I should have let them attempt to do more things for themselves that may have seemed a little above their abilities. I should have asked their teachers more questions about their social development and how to nurture those skills. I should have put as much energy into giving them a robust vocabulary to describe emotions as I did making sure they knew their colors and numbers.

Luckily for us, our children thrived with excellent preschool teachers. I just wish I had better understood how critically emotional and social skills are tied to lifelong success, and how a talented teacher imparts those skills.

I would have worried a lot less.