My classroom is a picture of true America. My students bring diversity of all sorts (gender, race, socio-economic status, language) to create a challenging but strong community. I teach 7th Grade Core which means I get to spend half of my day with the same 30 students (a gift, trust me) teaching them writing, literature, social studies, and basically how to be better human beings. We are a high poverty & high pride school.
Our district doesn't have a lot of money. This is my first year; when I got my classroom this summer I spent a week searching through empty classrooms and warehouses looking for desks to provide students acceptable workspaces. I was mildly successful. However, since I refuse to have those "prison chairs" (the ones where the chair is welded to the desk and you can't form table groups for community building without trapping two students in the middle) I had to settle for sad old tables. Today's class was disrupted when the legs fell off of one of those tables and everything came crashing to the floor. Nobody was hurt, and we all had a good laugh but it's really not that funny.
This is my plan. I don't think I could find somebody who would pay to refurnish my entire room, but I know I could find people who could help buy a couple of tables. Then I'll just keep asking for more until my room is filled with tables that won't harm my students. I've selected very strong and sturdy tables so they will last long after I am gone, and they have really cool color bands to brighten up the room (current tables have faux dark walnut surfaces with black legs...don't get me wrong kids are really into Goth and the color black, but the room doesn't need to be so gloomy.)
I guess what is most frustrating to me, aside from the collapsing desks, is the fact that the kids know they are working on old beat-up junk. Most of my students come from high poverty homes and they don't have nice things at home either. If you helped us get nice new tables you would help us to physically see that school is an important place. You could help us see school as a place to take pride in, a place with a clean, colorful, and stable working environment (physically and emotionally).
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