My students need tennis balls to make covers for the feet of their desks/chairs so they can wiggle and move into groups without creating scraping noises that drown out the person speaking.
$405 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! 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.
Did you like to move around when you were eleven years old? My math students do, and I encourage them to get comfortable in their chairs and re-arrange their desks to do group projects. Sadly, the smallest movements create loud, metallic, scraping sounds that even I have a hard time speaking over!
My students are urban kids who come from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds- Egyptian, Kurdish, Mexican, Iranian, Middle Eastern, El Salvadorian, African American, Vietnamese, Caucasian, Somalian, and many more.
We pride ourselves in our sense of unity and classroom diversity. We practice acceptance and tolerance and love to rearrange the desks to fit our particular needs for an activity, which include small groups, rows, large groups, and discussion circles. We have practiced and can change from one to another in about 30 seconds.
Our school has about 95% of students living below the poverty line, and many of our school facilities are older. We do our best to keep it clean, and might even get four computers for our classroom this year! However, many of my students do not have places to play at home or neighbors that they can play with. We use our classroom as a fluid space to learn and grow together. Movement is so important to my students, many of whom are kinesthetic learners.
My Project
I am requesting tennis balls to cover the feet of our tables and chairs because right now, we have to limit how often we move desks, which limits the kinds of activities we can do and how frequently we can do them. With these tennis balls, the desks and chairs will hardly make a sound and we will able to change our arrangement as often as we need without disturbing the students in nearby classrooms. Also, even when the students are sitting in their desks, they cannot scoot their chairs the smallest bit while someone is speaking. If they do, it overpowers the speaker and distracts the learners.
As a child, I wiggled relentlessly in order to keep my mind focused, so I understand the need to move. However, I find myself constantly telling my students to sit still so that we can hear. The volume of our furniture is hindering all aspects of our math learning. Worst of all, the $200 I get to buy supplies for our low socio-economic status children cannot be used to buy the tennis balls.
By helping us muffle the sounds of our desks and chairs, you will be giving these students the opportunity to learn in an environment that supports what the research says (and anyone who spends time with 6th graders knows): kids need to move to learn, and groupwork is vital to modern-day academic success.
Our year will be very difficult if the students can't even scoot their chairs to get comfortable. I want to let my students move and work in groups, and these simple balls will let me do that.
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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. Dennison and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.