|
|
By Candice
Wednesday,
Sep 16, 2009 at 4:01pm
We already know that DonorsChoose.org teachers are creative and dedicated to their students. But we love when we also get to witness a glimpse of the collaboration that takes place between teachers – like the teachers at Lincoln High School in San Francisco. Six teachers at the school have created a Green Academy for students, a three-year program for at-risk students who are interested in environmental issues and green collar jobs. Part of the program includes a Green Service Learning Elective, in which students will implement recycling programs, plant gardens and install solar panels!
Valerie Zeigler, a Green Academy teacher, has submitted a project to DonorsChoose.org requesting digital cameras that will allow the students to document their work and serve as ambassadors to their fellow classmates, families and other teachers. ABC -KGO in San Francisco spoke with Ms. Zeigler and her students about the program and the kinds of things they will learn thanks to the help of donors who support the Green Academy. You can see the clip and the students hard at work here!
If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe to receive new posts via email or RSS!
By Candice
Thursday,
Sep 3, 2009 at 1:42pm
Glory Wilson has been teaching for 22 years and, like most teachers, has seen district budgets get tighter and tighter. She has been proactive about taking technology courses and wants to use this knowledge to enrich learning experiences for her first grade students. Ms. Wilson knows how important it is for students to have access to technology in the classroom – both for her own students and for her sister classroom in South America!
She has turned to DonorsChoose.org in the hopes that generous donors will support her students and help to purchase a flip camera for her classroom. The students will use the camera to share lessons and artwork, and engage in interviews with the community – truly bringing learning experiences to life! Q13 Fox in Seattle shared this teacher’s story with its viewers and you can see the news clip here. Thanks to Ms. Wilson for your efforts to bring technology to the classroom! You can check out Ms. Wilson’s project, Flippin Over Learning, and other classroom projects on DonorsChoose.org.
If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe to receive new posts via email or RSS!
By Katie
Monday,
Aug 10, 2009 at 8:49pm
Open Society Institute - Baltimore (”OSI-Baltimore”) invites Baltimore City teachers to tap into $25,000 in funding to improve student attendance.
Examples of classroom projects OSI-Baltimore will be supporting:
- Elementary: Giving out certificates or snacks at an awards ceremony - for the student of the week or the whole class!
- Middle: Giving out play money for each day of attendance; allowing students to purchase rewards.
- High: Holding regular contests for strong attendance and improved attendance, and giving out rewards.
How OSI-Baltimore will be funding projects:
- Teachers should submit projects for materials $350 or lower.
- This funding will be offered as a 50% match offer, so OSI-Baltimore funding will activate automatically when other donors choose to join in and fund the rest of the project!
- High school teachers: If your project also is preparing students for the rigors of college, mention this in your short essay, so that your project will receive 50% funding from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Click here to see the teacher flyer with examples of the types of classroom projects that OSI-Baltimore is supporting (file is 1 MB; allow 10 - 15 seconds to download).
Visit OSI-Baltimore’s website to learn more about OSI-Baltimore or student attendance.
If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe to receive new posts via email or RSS!
By Melanie
Tuesday,
Jun 16, 2009 at 5:53pm
When donors funded a Flip camera for Ms. A and her NYC classroom, the donation enabled her students to submit an entry into the YOU.report video competition, a competition created by the producers of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
A group of Ms. A’s awesome students won the first-place prize, each receiving a Flip Ultra video camera of his own. (Check out their winning entry here: http://vimeo.com/4281016.)
Thanks, Ms. A, for being willing to request the resources your students need to thrive in the classroom, and thanks also to the donors who made her students’ win possible!
If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe to receive new posts via email or RSS!
By Natalie
Tuesday,
Jun 2, 2009 at 11:10pm
Last December, Mrs. Hardgrave’s proposal “Lewis and Clark” was funded thanks to Dallas Mustaches For Kids grower, Jon Alexis and the generous donors who sponsored his mustache. The classroom received 30 copies of the book, “Captain’s Dog: My Journey with the Lewis and Clark Tribe” and part of the project included creating a museum about every leg of the journey.
Walnut Glen Academy fifth graders got the chance to share their museum for the entire school and parents last week, and invited Mr. Alexis and his sponsors to witness the impact his mustache made on the students.
The museum filled the entire gym and students dressed in elaborate costumes performed skits centered around the Lewis & Clark expedition. Subjects included excerpts from Lewis’ journals, the Louisiana Purchase, food they ate on the trail, animals they discovered, Native Americas they encountered and even lesser-known people who played a crucial role in the expedition.
Click here to view the “Lewis and Clark” project.
Click here to learn more about Mustaches For Kids.
If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe to receive new posts via email or RSS!
By Candice
Wednesday,
May 27, 2009 at 7:40am
Kristen Anderson, a third grade teacher in Seattle, wants to make sure that her students are inspired to learn. She hopes to teach the class about history in a way that they can relate to the characters and understand the context - in other words, through the historical fiction book discussing the Great Depression, Song of the Trees. Once the students read the book, they will meet in book clubs to share their thoughts and questions about the story, connect to the characters and explore the larger themes of family, culture, and social justice.
Fox 13 spoke with Mrs. Anderson recently and learned that, due to funding decisions, four classrooms will have to share one set of supplies next year! The teacher is hoping to receive 30 copies of Song of the Trees so that each student will have his or her own copy to study. Her DonorsChoose.org proposal, Times are Hard Honey, expires soon and only needs $154 to bring this project to life! You can check out Mrs. Anderson’s classroom on Fox 13 here (click on the Lowell Elementary story).
If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe to receive new posts via email or RSS!
By Natalie
Saturday,
May 9, 2009 at 1:44am
Students at MacArthur Elementary are learning valuable lessons about preserving the environment thanks to materials received through DonorsChoose.org. Ms. Cummings’s kindergarten classroom now has recycling bins and their own compost bin, which gives the students a chance to get their hands dirty while providing lessons about biology and recycling.
The environmentally friendly kindergarteners caught the attention of a reporter at The News on 6 in Tulsa who visited their classroom last week. The students showed their enthusiasm for the creepy crawlers that ultimately break down food scraps into healthy soil.
The green lesson plans are clearly making an impact on the students. According to Ms. Cummings, “Parents come to me all the time telling me my child is on me all the time about recycling paper and plastics.”
In addition to helping teach the kids about preserving the planet, DonorsChoose.org grants have boosted their reading skills and introduced them to cultures halfway around the world.
Click here to view the inspiring story from The News on 6 in Tulsa.
Click here to view other projects from MacArthur Elementary that are currently being sponsored by the George Kaiser Family Foundation.
If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe to receive new posts via email or RSS!
By Kris
Monday,
May 4, 2009 at 11:50pm
At DonorsChoose.org, we love it when citizen philanthropists and teachers connect with one another, and sometimes that connection takes on a magic of its own. That’s what happened with a long-time donor from the San Francisco Area. This donor is an avid reader and a warm-hearted soul who read about an outstanding teacher in a national newspaper a few years ago. She was inspired by this teacher from Boston—Nancy Barile—and decided to contact Nancy directly to ask how she could help. And one of the things this donor offered in the way of help was an introduction to a super-cool new website (you may recognize the name): DonorsChoose.org. That was when something incredible happened!
Nancy became a devotee of DonorsChoose.org and started posting her requests right away. She’s now had fifteen projects funded—from class sets of literature to ping-pong tables for her students. And she hasn’t stopped there. She made it her personal mission to spread the word about DonorsChoose.org to every one of her colleagues. She’s presented staff workshops about the website and has trained colleagues to post effective requests. Since Nancy got involved, 117 projects have been funded at 11 schools in Nancy’s Massachusetts school district, including at her school—Revere High School. And anyone who has ever spoken to Nancy would not be surprised by her successful outreach. The word “dynamo” comes to mind….
Nancy has been changing students’ lives for the past 14 years. She came to teaching as a second career, inspired by positive memories of her own high school English teacher. Before she found DonorsChoose.org, she would annually underwrite her classroom needs with as much as $2,000 from her personal funds. But no more—by linking to her project requests on her Facebook page and engaging her broad network of friends, fans, and “friends of fans,” she sees her projects come to life almost as soon as she posts them. She tells us, “it’s such fun when a project ‘takes off’ and experiences a flurry of funding all at once!” Nancy uses DonorsChoose.org to bring creative and innovative learning opportunities to her at-risk students and has helped many of them gain access to excellent colleges in recent years. In her eyes, every extra effort is worthwhile, as every student deserves a shot at success. And, with the help of her “West Coast Angel” and DonorsChoose.org, Nancy is giving that shot to every one of her students!
If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe to receive new posts via email or RSS!
By Candice
Tuesday,
Mar 31, 2009 at 5:43pm
Ms. Haney teaches 2nd graders in Washington state who are new to the United States, and, in many cases, never had any experience in their native countries in a classroom or school at all. Her classroom currently includes students from six different countries speaking five different languages. In order to help bridge the gap for these young learners, Ms. Haney submitted a project on DonorsChoose.org for multicultural books, math books and character-building books. These books will help her students relate to the characters in the stories and learn the building blocks for reading.
Seattle’s Maria Arcega-Dunn recently featured Ms. Haney’s classroom on Q13 Fox News to spread the word about these much-needed books. You can check out the news story here. Ms. Haney’s classroom still needs help – if you want to support these students, click here!
If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe to receive new posts via email or RSS!
By Candice
Friday,
Mar 20, 2009 at 7:36pm
Lyanne Melendez of ABC7 in San Francisco sat down with DonorsChoose.org founder Charles Best this week to hear about how this all got started. Along with alot of hard work and the help of some Silicon Valley leaders, it was reported that bribes of homemade dessert were involved!
ABC also visited a Sausalito classroom to check out a DonorsChoose.org user in action. Mrs. Morris is teaching her students music, but currently has no instruments to teach with. Thanks to the project that she posted on DonorsChoose.org - 4th Grade Harmony: Melodious Music with Ravishing Recorders - her classroom will soon have recorders to play. After the classroom was featured on ABC, generous music-loving donors completely funded the music project in one day!
Thank you to the donors who made this idea a reality for these Sausalito students (and of course, thank you to someone’s mom for making dessert back in 2000). You can check out the full story here.
If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe to receive new posts via email or RSS!
|
|
