Located in Detroit, our school is home to students from across the world. Most of our students are English Language Learners, and many are first-generation Americans or immigrants.
Our students are some of the strongest people I know.
Most of our immigrant students have come from a war-torn country, and our school is 100% free lunch. Despite many of them having faced challenges I cannot imagine, they are inquisitive, thoughtful and eager to learn.
The parents in our community are eager to help their students learn, but most of them face a language barrier in helping their students. However, they too rise to the occasion and actively seek out an education for their children. Our whole school community is a village, with everyone pitching in to make sure our students can learn.
My Project
All of a sudden, the lives of our students changed mid-March. When Michigan entered a stay-at-home advisory, schools in our area had to close. In the scramble to serve our students, a huge barrier we face is students' lack of access to devices for online learning.
Our students should not be robbed of an education simply because they do not have the means to access it.
Before the closure, we were seeing amazing growth in our students. Students who started the year not speaking any English were holding conversations with teachers, kindergarteners were becoming readers, and students in all grades were excited to see their test scores rising. It is heartbreaking to think these gains may not be sustained if our students can't access online resources for learning. If we are able to get devices into our students' hands, we can bridge the gap between our students' desire to learn and the current necessity of distance learning.
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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. Crawford-Mook and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
