Teaching in a high-needs, Title I school, my students are often faced with challenges outside of the classroom. They are often unable to access technology outside of school hours for various reasons, including both socioeconomic status and stressful family situations.
My goal is to do my part in closing the achievement gap within my own district by providing students with opportunities to be fully exposed to and excited about all of their academic content.
I also aim to help them see the relevance to them!
We also have an increasing ELL population, so I have students who are great academically in their first language but having expected challenges in our content in English. I try to provide them with resources and materials in their first language where appropriate, and in tandem with the English materials.
Most of my students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch due to their families' socioeconomic status. This means their stresses outside of the classroom are regarding more basic needs. This puts them at a disadvantage in their early lives, to their peers competing for college admissions and eventually jobs down the road.
They are hardworking, motivated, and engaged in any content I present!
My Project
My students (and their families) are very concerned, with recent school closures, that the summer slide will start early this year and leave them completely unprepared in the fall when they start their new grades. Both families and I also are not giant proponents of students staring at screens for six hours a day to make sure they are practicing all of our usual content areas enough to keep them growing.
Our situation is even more complicated due to the fact that some of my students have limited, or literally no access to technology at home.
This means that regardless of how great we are doing with online skills practice, their academic practice is limited to what I can mail them. This leaves them feeling disconnected from the group, and with very little motivation to fill out packets at home.
With these workbooks, I could mail them out, then simply call or text each family the pages for that week—as well as a message or visual to remind the students of how we practiced that skill earlier in the year. This will surely increase engagement and aid my students in preventing the summer slide from happening at all this year!
More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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. Griswold and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
