Chromebooks for a Diverse Group of Independent Learners
My students need a class set of HP Chromebooks to have access to a range of Social Studies texts at different reading levels and to be able to work with those texts at their own pace.
FULLY FUNDED! Mr. Sehring's classroom raised $6,045
This project is fully funded
My Students
Our students are an academically, racially, geographically and socio-economically integrated group of kids from all over Brooklyn; Redhook, Park Slope, Brownsville and Gowanus. My school is one of four on campus. Four years ago, after decades serving a majority black and Latino student body from outside of the gentrified Park Slope neighborhood, a cohort of white students from the local K-5 school integrated into the student body.
Our students embrace the belief that separate CANNOT be equal and that an injustice for one is an injustice for all.
Our students were the subject of a feature for New York Magazine on school integration, and were interviewed by Chris Hayes for MSNBC on the anniversary of Brown vs the Board of Education.
They benefit in innumerable ways from the opportunity, surprisingly rare in American schools, to learn alongside classmates with vastly different backgrounds, experiences and learning styles.
My Project
Each year, my 6th graders come from across Brooklyn to begin Middle School in a brand new place. They are tasked with becoming independent thinkers and building skills they'll need to engage with each other, the world and our collective past. They're asked to do this work as a group, to learn together no matter how different their experiences of school have been so far. It’s an amazing process, but one that challenges me to provide many different types of students the ability to engage with the same ideas at the same time.
Part of the challenge of working in a truly integrated Social Studies classroom is meeting the needs of a wide range of students whose first languages, learning styles, reading levels, interests, and access to technology vary.
I don't teach out of a textbook and I don't expect students to become independent learners if they can't independently make meaning of texts. Because of the lack of access to educational technology at our school, students are often limited not by their interest or ambition, but by the materials I can readily provide them. A set of Chromebooks would change this.
Students without internet access at home will have an opportunity to develop computer literacy skills and raise the level of their classwork. Chromebooks will allow all students access to the material whenever they need it, to catch up after an absence, read an article at a different lexile level or review an old strategy before starting a new challenge.
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
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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 Mr. Sehring and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.