"The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences." ~Eleanor Roosevelt
As a teacher in a juvenile detention center, my mission is to provide my students with as many "life experiences" as possible!
Many of my students come from low-income homes. However, they are hard-working, eager to demonstrate what they know, and desire the option to experience new things. We try to provide them with strategies and experiences that will give them other options when they are released.
My Project
My students are court-ordered to be in my classroom. One of the things we work on is building empathy, for two reasons. First, we hope that via empathy they will see how their actions affect others. Second, by looking deeper into others' lives, we hope the students can recognize that everyone has problems and that they need to find safe ways to deal with/overcome their own. This project has students using looms to knit hats for babies. The hats will then be donated to hospitals via the "Little Hats, Big Hearts" campaign sponsored by the American Heart Association in the month of February. However, we want to go beyond just one month, and plan to incorporate the project all year round during our weekly service project time.
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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. W. and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.