This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
How often do we dream of students who care about their local community, who set aside their own immediate desires to focus on others? My gifted students have access to textbooks but little else, and they desperately need technology to expand their skills and to help their visions become reality.
At a high school in southern Louisiana, I serve the needs of primarily gifted students, a classification of students who are not only cognitively advanced, but who also have their own set of emotional needs.
Highly sensitive and driven to compassionately improve the world around them, these students, often overlooked because of their self-supported academic achievements, prefer to focus on the needs of others in the community and of the world at large. In a high school where at least 75% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, many of the students lack at-home computer access and are thus limited in their exposure to technology that is vital to their future success. Although this project was conceived with a specific focus, the requested technological resources have limitless applications, and the tablets will last far into the future. These students absolutely need these tablets as a means of exploring and expanding the boundaries of their own curiosity and drive.
My Project
As an English Language Arts teacher, over the years, I have collected an assortment of textbooks, but my classroom does not have the technological resources that are invaluable to gifted students, who can see connections in the world and who can envision the potential for change, often through creative problem-solving ideas that have revolutionary impact. These 4 tablets will enable the students to complete a project of their own design whereby they visit residents in a local nursing home and use the tablets to conduct and film interviews. They will then use the interview transcripts and results to not only write and publish a paperback and e-book compilation, which they will distribute to their interview subjects, but they will also establish a website companion that will serve as the starting point for future projects of a similar nature that will, all together, become a first-person historical encapsulation of the entire community. The benefits of this technology are immeasurable.
Many of these students do not have at-home computer access, and being able to develop proficiency with these tablets will help them enhance their cognitive abilities and their potential so that they can finish their high school career with a skill set that will enable them to be more nationally and globally competitive.
Often unsure and skeptical of technology, these students will see how it can be implemented in a compassionate way, and they will be able to dream up even more wonderful uses.
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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. Watson and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.