A Desperately Needed Laptop

We are nomads--no classroom to call our own, and you guessed it, no laptop computer. I teach Wellness, which is a course primarily composed of ninth grade students, ranging from all ability levels, including special education students. I would consider our community a high-need community, certainly one in which few students are able to pay classroom fees in order to purchase much needed materials.

No classroom, not enough textbooks, and finally, no computer. This year the Wellness classroom was taken away to provide another department with some much needed space. As a result, the Wellness teachers and students became known as "floaters," which means that we float to a different classroom at every class change. One of the major obstacles that we have faced in all of this "floating" is that our once classroom set of textbooks has now been equally divided to all of our destination classrooms, which leaves our students sharing one book between 2-3 students. Because of this complication, the other Wellness teachers and I have put most of our core curriculum into PowerPoint presentations, but after an archaic computer bit the dust, we now do not have a laptop to accompany our LCD projector, which means again, after no classroom, not enough books, and now, no computer, our instruction is suffering. We are trying to be as resourceful as possible to keep our students' attention and to interestingly teach our state standards, but we are a bit overwhelmed.

If you could give any assistance in funding a laptop for our department, the Wellness teachers could save and share all of our PowerPoint presentations, photos, videos, etc., and our classroom instruction would greatly improve. Also, in the Wellness curriculum, there are many opportunities for guest speakers, such as mental health workers, first aid and CPR trainers, sex educators, etc., who often request two materials before they come to speak: a computer and a projector. We have the LCD projector, but we desperately need the laptop computer that we can transport from classroom to classroom. Again, students' classroom experiences are suffering at the cost of no available computer.

Your help will provide our students with meaningful classroom experiences through up-to-date instruction, classroom guest speakers, collaboration from colleagues, and simply an alternative to sharing damaged, out-of-date textbooks.