This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
A great race is going on in this country. It is a race to college, a race to success. But great races are fair races, and this one is rigged. Low-income students are working with decades-old technology. Imagine a Ferrari versus a rickshaw. My students need a projector.
Chicago is a city of great contrasts.
Sweltering summers and bone-chilling winters. Some of the nation's top-performing schools and its most forgotten. Some students attend schools where they are given new laptops upon enrollment, and attend classes in rooms with smart-boards and sound systems that rival college campuses. My students do not. 95 percent of my school's students live below the poverty line. 28 of my 29 students are Latino and speak Spanish at home. As English-language learners (ELLs), they learn best visually. They come to learn each day in classroom equipped with a dusty overhead projector and a teacher with high hopes and expectations, but pitiful penmanship. What they need is the opportunity to see the world through the power of pictures, videos, music, and the Internet. Just think about how many resources open with the click of a mouse. Right now, we do our best huddled around my 13-inch laptop on a desk when we need to watch a video clip.
My Project
To understand how vital this technology is to my students, it is worth doing a short exercise. Picture a chair. What shape is it? What color? Is it made from wood? Plastic? Metal? Do you think that your chair looks the same as someone else's would? Probably not. Therein lies both the beauty and difficulty inherent in language: it is ambiguous. But, if shown a picture of a chair, you and everyone else in the room would know exactly what chair is meant. This is the power of a multimedia projector. My students would no longer be asked to learn about the world through only two dimensions and two colors: black and white. With modern technology, the phrase "show and tell" takes on a whole new meaning in the classroom.
Of course, at a school where 95 percent of the families are low-income, in school district that has a roughly 1 billion dollar deficit, money for technology is not exactly forthcoming.
In times of scarcity, generosity seems always to be the solution. With your donations, my students can get the technology that will open for them the education that they deserve, the education we have promised them, and the education I am trying earnestly to provide. Thank you!
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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 Mr. Clarke and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.