Help Us Move to the Twenty-First Century

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

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.

My Students

"It should not matter how slowly a child learns, as long as we are encouraging them not to stop." - Robert John Meehan Knock, Knock, Knock! It is time for our first group of third graders in the Learning Center. This is our first of 8 groups, knocking every thirty minutes throughout the day.

Our school is an urban school comprised of approximately 600 students.

We are a Title I funded school and 95% of the students we serve are below the poverty line. Sixty percent of our students are Hispanic with Spanish being their first language. Some of the benefits that a Title I School receives are both free breakfast and lunch programs and an after school tutoring program. These monumental programs do not begin to make a dent in the shortcomings that exist in the educational program and the lives of the students that attend our school. Most students are without help with their homework afterschool, and certainly lack "extra" educational resources in their homes.

My Project

I am a resource teacher and I teach students K-5. My students are taught in the general education classroom, and the majority of them have been identified as having a Specific Learning Disability or some other disability which requires services provided by me in order that they may access the core curriculum. My caseload is currently comprised of twenty nine students. I teach in small groups, in thirty minute blocks one session after another in both language arts and mathematics. Oftentimes, people think that resources would fall into the neediest of places. Well that is truly not the case. Our Learning Center just received its first working computer, a 2000 model which does not run the current updated programs. At the moment we are unable to print any documents. Recently, every class received $100 in books, however, the Learning Center did not. Our classroom is marginalized with emphasis placed on the general education program.

The donation of a MacBook will help the Learning Center run more efficiently.

For one, my students would have a working computer in the classroom with which they too could remain updated on the most current technology. It makes sense that students which need accommodations such as extended time, smaller group instruction, and one-on-one support would learn about technology in a smaller risk free setting. Studies show that students with processing challenges learn best through different modalities.