I am a teacher in Durham, North Carolina. We are a Title I school providing a strong foundational education for a very diverse student base. My projected classroom demographics consists of one Asian student, six African American students, three mixed-race students, and eight Hispanic students coming from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds.
Having students who present a wide range of reading abilities requires access to a wide range of materials.
In our second grade curriculum we love to support learning by engaging more than standard teaching practices. Students today need to opportunity to explore knowledge through a variety of mediums. I learned the term craftivity this past year. It is a way to allow students to learn by creating an artistic artifact that goes along with their unit of study.
I am a second year, second grade teacher with a limited state budget to support the purchase and replacement of items used in partnership with our curriculum when we included artistic activities with our reading, writing and science projects.
My Project
Every student begins the year with excitement and nervousness. What will the year bring? Will my teacher be nice? Will I know the kids in my class. Every year educators offer a list of supplies for parents to send their children to school with. Some students are lucky enough to have everything they need provided for them. Others students are part of an increasing number of students who come from homes that struggle to provide the basics.
This year in my classroom I am hoping to keep the students who are not able to supply the classroom list of supplies from being embarrassed when they show up empty handed.
This year with the help of donors, I am making sure that I have class sets of scissors, glue sticks, crayons, and folders that I will use to make a connection with each child's home. I am ordering pencil boxes for each desk to help organize all of these wonderful supplies. These are the items that have previously been requested of each parent to provide for the child, so to eliminate the awkward feelings experienced by my students who are not able to provide the basic tools for learning I am hoping to offer them instead.
The beauty of this thought is that I, "we" will provide these items because we understand that the basics such as scissors, folders, and pencils are essential to learning and growing. To give students, even those who can afford to complete the list will learn that we share the wealth in our classroom without deviation. I want to teach my students that we give without expectations, never knowing how our gift will be used.
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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. Barrington and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
