Help me give my students an educational opportunity that they'll take with them for the rest of their lives by providing safe travel without adding additional costs for families.
After eighteen years in the classroom, my students are still the best part of my job. Every day I walk into my room toward a new day, just waiting to see what my kids have in store for me ... and they never disappoint. They come from all walks of life: high and low income, farms and apartments (some even living in tents), with their families and some in foster care, reading above grade-level and barely able to read - but all with a ton of knowledge in their own right and more than willing to pass that information along to whoever is willing to listen AND all eager to learn and absorb new information into their sponge-like brains.
My students deserve the very best that education can provide, but we are currently not in a place, unfortunately, where education is being made a priority.
Thankfully, there are places like DonorsChoose that help teachers compensate for what classrooms would otherwise be missing. I have phenomenal students who all have differing needs when they walk through the school doors in the morning, but I owe it to each of them to meet those individual needs - they are worth nothing less.
My Project
I work to offer students a world trip every two years an opportunity not dependent on grades earned or the number of years learning a foreign language. Historically, only students who'd taken a language for three or more years were eligible to travel to a country whose main language matched that of the class so French III, IV, or V students could go on the trip to France, for example.
Because we wanted to offer an unforgettable learning opportunity - such as world travel - to all of our students that would get them out of the classroom and into real-world experience, we decided to put together a program using EF Tours that would do just that.
The opportunity to travel, however, comes at a cost - a significant cost for some families - but one that they're willing to take on to give their children an experience that will change them (for the better) for the rest of their lives. We plan the trips two years in advance to help break down the cost to manageable monthly payments, but those costs do not include travel to and from the airport.
Dartmouth Coach offers our travelers a safe and convenient means of transportation. Each traveler has to get himself/herself to and from the departure site of the Coach, but from there they are safely bussed directly to the airport terminal from which we will fly. Along the way, students can rest, talk, use a bathroom - all without having to worry about driving several hours away or dealing with the excitement (and then exhaustion) that accompanies this type of opportunity.
We're hoping to be able to offset some of the additional costs for families that not having a school bus for travel to and from the airport creates.
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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. Little and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.