Our school serves students in grades K-6 and provides rigorous academics to amazing, motivated language learners in a safe learning environment. Our goal is to prepare our students for success in high school, college, and future careers. The students in our school are about 70% ELL and speak about 20 different languages.
The students in my New American classroom are English language learners who have been in the country for less than one year.
Not all students who are non-English speakers are selected for this setting. My students are refugees from several different countries. They have had limited or interrupted schooling in their own countries due to lack of resources and upheaval. This year, I have students from Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Tanzania, Mexico, and Honduras. There are many different languages in my classroom and several different cultures. For these students, life in our city is very different from their lives before coming here. We strive to be at all times respectful and appreciative of each other's culture and strengths. We believe that we all have gifts to share, and that with education we will have the power to do so.
My Project
We began the school year with most of the supplies we needed - thanks to our amazing DonorsChoose community.
It is getting to be the time of the year where our beginning of the year supplies are starting to get a little thin.
Our pencil sharpener finally groaned its final groan. It will no longer even pretend to sharpen a pencil. Our stapler is still trying, but it jams A LOT. The students have taken to hitting it on the table to get it to unstick. It eats a lot of staples. Our glue sticks have simply been worn down from use. The students are careful with these, but they can't last forever. The scissors we use have been begged from different places - mostly cast aside from other classrooms. They work, but they are small for my older students. The students want ones that are big enough to fit their larger hands. We currently have one large pair and all of the students want that pair. They feel more comfortable for them... for the oldest boys in my class, using those little scissors leaves painful indentations on their fingers. They hate that. The construction paper and copy paper will allow us to create new and creative projects, as will the fun take-home art activities. Our supplies are simply wearing out and down.
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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. Jensen and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.