Most pictures are worth a thousand words, but when they help students envision their futures, they're worth even more!
I teach in rural Georgia, and over the past several years we have been working hard to improve our graduation rate and encourage our students to consider going to college. The difficulty is that many of them see education as impractical "book learning."
One of the courses I teach has helped to counter that idea. In Journalism, students work together to publish the school newspaper and yearbook. They create a product that has lasting value. As they do, they see the real-world application of the academic skills they're learning.
It's no surprise that interest in this program has grown exponentially! Unfortunately, our resources have stayed about the same. We have a single digital camera that is shared among the 61 students enrolled in the program (this semester alone!) to create both the newspaper and the yearbook!
I regularly remind my students that they don't need a fancy camera to take fantastic pictures. But it's difficult to take pictures at all when someone else is using the camera.
Student-created publications are an amazing opportunity to help students envision new possibilities. I have seen at-risk students graduate and go on to study journalism at college, and I know that working on our newspaper and yearbook staff helped make that possible.
I don't want our newest students to miss out on that. Please help me make it possible for them to participate fully in this class.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. C. and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.