As families get ready for the return to school, teachers have been preparing, too, for the new school year. And Lillian Brown hopes her business can offer the materials they need.
In August, Brown’s store, Educational Depot, marked one year at its new location in Calumet City, after 10 years on 127th Street in Calumet Park.
Monique Moore, an eighth grade teacher in Dolton, said she was “definitely impressed” the first time she came to the store, now located in a shopping center on the north side of 159th Street just east of Interstate 94.
Moore, who lives in St. John, Indiana, said, “I pass a lot of other stores to come here.” Granted, “there is not a teachers store on every corner,” Moore said, but she could get some school items at a Walmart or Dollar Store.
Educational Depot, however, offers a wider selection, good quality materials and a knowledgeable owner.
“This is a business I would recommend,” Moore said.
Brown, who has a technical background, taught more than 30 years in five Chicago Public Schools, including Corliss, Wendell Phillips and Kennedy high schools and Simeon Career Academy, and at Olive Harvey and Moraine Valley Community College. She retired as a test data coordinator for CPS.
“I’ve been around education for a little bit,” Brown said with understatement. “I wanted to be an all-around educator, so I would know what I was talking about.”
She was retired about six months, when she told her husband she wanted to open a store selling school and education materials for teachers, students and parents.
“It was very important to me that I brought resources to my community,” Lillian said. “When I was teaching, it was difficult finding the resource material.”
Her husband, Sherman, who worked 36 years at Chicago’s 911 Center, retired about a year before his wife. He had looked forward to hanging out with his friends at McDonald’s and doing his “own things” during retirement, he said.
“That didn’t work out so well,” Sherman said.
Instead, he supported his wife’s idea and has been working with her in the store from the beginning.
“I was on board with whatever she wanted to do,” Sherman said.
“That’s my left hand,” Brown said, pointing to her husband. The couple, who have four children, celebrated 50 years of marriage this month.
“We try to make a difference in the community,” Sherman said.
And nothing is more rewarding than seeing a teacher’s face who finds what she or he is looking for in their store, Sherman said.
Their customers come from schools in Matteson, Richton Park, West Harvey-Dixmoor School District 147, Thornton Township High School District 205 in South Holland, as well as Calumet City and Chicago.
Joe Ann Millender said she comes to the store “because I know they have everything I need.”
“I work at a day care center and I’ve come in here before for attendance books and things like that,” Millender said. “I’ve been to Dollar General and Staples. At least I can find everything I need here and I don’t have to look for someone to help.”
If a customer wants something specific, the Browns can show them right where it is. If they don’t have it, they will order it.
Educational Depot carries a large selection of maps, bulletin board borders and informational posters and cutouts, such as “America’s Founders” for social studies and “Chemistry Basics” for science.
“We have resources for pre-K through 12th grade,” Lillian Brown said.
The store carries standards-based curriculum materials, workbooks and classroom items such as puzzles, fraction cubes, flash cards and clocks for learning to tell time.
It also sells children’s shirts and pants for school uniforms, backpacks, stools, accessories like hall passes and stamps, and has a laminating machine and printing service.
Jannette Smith, who teaches special education students at Wendell Green Elementary School on 96th Street in Chicago, brought in posters for the Browns to laminate. She shopped for paper and other supplies while she was there.
“My school gives us a credit to shop here,” Smith said.
The store is an authorized Chicago Public School vendor, but is still recovering from the pandemic.
“COVID shut us down for about eight months,” in 2020, Brown said. “It was real bad. It took me a long time to build the business to that capacity.”
Brown said she applied for loans and grants for businesses affected by the coronavirus, but received none.
She considered closing for good. “I just started praying on it.”
Brown decided to reopen and is working to build the business back up, spreading the word to area schools that the store exists and wants to provide teachers and students what they need at the store or online at educationaldepot.net.
She is proud of all the items she stocks.
“Everything you see is of interest to me,” Brown said. “I love everything about the store because that is who I am.”
Educational Depot, at 2010 River Oaks Drive in Calumet City, is open from Monday through Saturday.
Kimberly Fornek is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
