Tablet to Teach Teens.

My Students

How big were the classes you used to sit in when you were in high school? Mine weren't very large...maybe twenty-five students at most. Today I teach four classes and three of those four have thirty-four students each! I simply cannot differentiate lessons for so many students at once.

My students come from broken homes, homeless shelters, the projects, and worse.

They take public transportation--buses and trains--to and from one of the most dangerous corners in this city. Most of them have limited or no access to computers and the internet outside of our school. Some of them share a one bedroom apartment with Mom, Dad, Grandmom, and three siblings. Their home lives are crowded and now so are their classrooms. Our public school bends over backwards to help our students as much as possible, but budget cuts have severely decimated funding for extra teachers and helping hands, hence our over-crowded classrooms.

My Project

You may be asking yourself, "What can she do with one tablet in a classroom of so many?" The answer is astounding. There are countless apps that I can download for free that can be used for small group instruction with students who need that extra "push" to do well. I can project from it in the classroom so the entire class can see the web site or document I'm referring to in the lesson. I'll be able to use the camera for all kinds of amazing activities and the apps for reading and writing alone would make this worthwhile will allow us to continue working in the paperless classroom environment that I established as we explore literary classics by Twain, Shakespeare, Poe, and Dickens. Students maintain blogs, peer edit through Google Docs, read literature online, keep up with lessons and assignments on my teacher Google site, and submit work through email. Without the correct tools, they cannot continue to excel in this environment and in their studies.

My students are reminded on a daily basis how little most of the nation cares about them.

Budget cuts, political digs, and a lack of adequate facilities and materials teach them at an early age to toughen up and not care. A donation of something as special as this device would mean so much to them. Not only would it assist them in classroom activities, it would also help them to realize that people really do care about their education.