Lifeskills Practice for Students with Multiple Disabilities
My students need wireless skillets, mixing bowls, dish drying mats, hand mixers, and kitchen tools for our cooking life-skills lessons.
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. Ashley's classroom raised $395
This project is fully funded
My Students
Good Morning! Today, we're going to make Coconut Curry Pumpkin Soup and Pumpkin Pudding. Welcome to weekly cooking with our class. Our secret ingredient this week is Pumpkin and we have all of our ingredients the only thing we're missing is....cooking/kitchen supplies in our classroom!
I teach in a specialized school in a special district in New York City.
My school is an Occupational Training Center. At our school, not only do we focus on traditional academics but we place a heavy emphasis on vocational and daily living skills to help support our students and prepare them to be the most independent they can after they graduate. Like all classrooms, the abilities and areas of improvement for my students vary greatly however in my classroom, while some students are able to clearly and eloquently articulate what they are thinking and how they feel others cannot verbalize their needs, wants, and thoughts at all. Teaching to the individual needs of my students, when they vary so greatly is one challenge to me and many other special educators however, one thing all of my students share in common is their natural curiosity for the world, desire for learning, and the benefit they gain from hands-on, concrete, and "real-life" learning opportunities.
My Project
As a special education teacher, I have the challenge and task of finding the ways in which my students learn best and working to meet their individual needs as students and persons while also fostering a love for learning and desire to dream and achieve in my students. In our classroom, we cook. Each week we pick a different "secret" ingredient to use to make two different dishes. Once we've chose our recipe, we go on a community walk to buy our ingredients and then cook what we've planned and prepared to cook. So far this year, we've had to scrounge and borrow cooking and kitchen supplies from all parts of the school. By having our own cooking and kitchen supplies, we will begin to build our own classroom cooking area. These cooking supplies will enable us to continue our cooking lessons and improve our social, math, literacy, communication, safety, fine motor, gross motor, hygiene and listening skills while also using our bodies and engaging everyone in our class.
My students face great challenges everyday.
Their disabilities make activities and tasks you and I might take for granted incredibly complex, confusing, and at times, exhausting. By acquiring the requested materials, I will be better able to serve the needs of all of my students in an engaging, motivating, practical, and highly beneficial way. Cooking allows my students to improve key skills in a way that is concrete, hands-on, and is directly linked to life skills outside of the classroom.
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. Ashley and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.