My students need a variety of soft pastels and tools.
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. Mendez's classroom raised $419
This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
My Students
Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun -Mary Lou Cook.
As children grow up, creativity begins to dwindle and they become more concerned with if they have the right or wrong answer. We need to foster and keep on teaching creativity.
I am very lucky to have a great group of individuals this year.
The children are not only well mannered and outgoing, but highly motivated to do great in school. Many of them have an interest in the arts (theater, music and art). They usually bring me little projects from home to demonstrate what they have done. Some of them would rather spend their recess making up songs, dances or even little skits instead of playing.
We are a Title 1 school, right in the center of a low-income community. Because we are localized in the center of a city where people are trying to make ends meet, illegal activity is a normality. Our school strives to provide a place where kids look forward to coming to, somewhere where they know that they are safe.
My Project
Our school receives a budget to allocate for the arts. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of our teachers get to have a visual arts teacher for a few weeks, once a week. Others, like me, do not get this opportunity (the luck of the draw).
So knowing what I was looking forward to this year, I started to take art lessons myself. I have learned the very basic skills and I want to teach my students what I have learned. I have to say that the most important lesson that I am learning with pastels is not to be afraid to make a mistake. Creativity is never a mistake. Pastels are a medium where one can manipulate in so many ways that one can never be wrong. And I want my students to learn not to be afraid of creativity, that there is never a right or wrong answer in it.
An art piece that I have a goal for them is that by the end of the year, the kids will create an image that describes where they come from using blending and shading techniques.
The donations to this project will help and foster my students' creativity.
And their creativity is their own, no one else's. They will learn not to be afraid to work with tools that they had never worked with before, to take risks. They will learn that experimenting and breaking the rules can lead to new ideas and projects. But above everything else, they will learn more about themselves.
Nearly all 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 Ms. Mendez and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
