This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
You often hear about schools wasting resources. This is an unfortunate reality in my classroom; a SmartBoard goes unused because I lack the accompanying projector. With a projector, my students could fully use the resources provided by our SmartBoard and the Internet to explore the wider world.
My students are third graders at an urban charter school in north St.
Louis. They are an eager and enthusiastic bunch of learners who are committed to “growing their brains” and preparing themselves for success in fourth grade and beyond. While they are all extremely curious about the world around them, most of them have never traveled outside of St. Louis, and many of them have limited opportunities to venture outside of the neighborhood where they live and attend school.
My students face enormous obstacles, but work hard every day to overcome them. Many of my students wake themselves up in the mornings or complete their homework alone at night, all because they are dedicated to getting the most out of their time at school. They come into the classroom ready to maximize their learning time and are excited by new ideas and information. They surprise me with their insights and the questions they pose about new topics.
My Project
A computer projector will allow my students to experience the materials we are studying in new ways. It will allow us to utilize our currently unused SmartBoard. It will give us a means of exploring videos, sound clips, and exciting visuals that match the topics we are studying in class. In short, a projector will open up new worlds to my students, whose horizons have often been unfairly limited.
While I know that technology is not everything in a classroom, having access to a projector and SmartBoard would give my students opportunities to experience the world in a way that they have never been able to before. Instead of just reading about extinct and endangered animals, we will be able to watch videos of habitat destruction and study large pictures of animals that have long been gone from the Earth. Instead of simply copying notes from an overhead about place value, we can play interactive games that allow will allow us to manipulate and explore numbers in exciting ways.
When my students leave the classroom and neighborhood where they were born, they will enter a world that is teeming with information available through technology.
A projector will allow them to experience this world now, to access this information sooner. A projector will help expand my students’ horizons beyond our classroom, beyond their neighborhood. It will open their eyes even more to the wonders of the wider world and help increase their desire to see this world for themselves.
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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. Robertson and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.