I am beyond excited that my students Marta and Chloe designed this project. It shows me they are dedicated: they want more for their education and they are willing to work together for something they know will help them and their classmates increase class productivity and learning.
The idea came up one day when we were looking at models that were borrowed from another Physio/Anatomy teacher. They were naming the bones on a half-sized skeleton and the discussion turned to the need to use the skeletons on alternate days with the other classroom for an upcoming test. Not having access to the materials on a daily basis would affect their learning, and affect when we scheduled the test. These two young women took the initiative to rectify this situation. As the class discussed ideas for what we needed the most - they agreed that having our own dissection tools would be a great place to start. They came up with a list of dissection tools and a selection of microscope slides that would benefit our class and more for years to come.
College is the next step for my students, and so right now is the most important time of their lives. Their experiences in high school will shape their future in college and beyond. With this student-led project, my goal is for my students to understand the importance of addressing needs through self-advocacy, to learn teamwork by collaborating with other students/adults on projects with deadlines, and increase literacy through thoughtful and sophisticated writing. They will learn they can achieve great things by working hard and putting forth a concerted effort. All these social-emotional skills are essential life skills and will help them in their future careers.
In Their Own Words
Our project idea is to have dissection equipment in the classroom such as scalpels, scissors, and knives for when we do dissections and microscope slides of different mammalian cells. Our goal is to identify and learn the structure of each organ/tissue we are dissecting or viewing under the microscope and share our learning with our classmates through reports or presentations. Hands-on inquiry combined with visual learning enables our brain to remember what we have learned better.
We find it super important to take the lead on this project so that we can help our class and anatomy students in the future. We want our teacher to have the supplies she needs to successfully teach Anatomy. In the future, when our teacher is in her classroom using the materials that we worked very hard to earn, she will remember how determined we were to help her obtain these materials. We are really looking forward to dissections!
I attend a good school, one that has a reputation of providing a good education to students. We have an amazing teacher who gives her all in order to teach us, and she would be so much more successful if we had the materials we needed as a class. This would in turn increase the quality of the class and learning experience, and will make our school, district and the surrounding community even better.
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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 Mrs. Borstel and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
