My students need hands-on technology opportunities, and this project would give us one Android tablet for every 2-3 students. Currently we have no tech in our classroom, so this would be a game changer.
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
I teach 164 amazing 9th graders in Detroit. Our school is a Title 1 school, and 100% of our students are eligible for and receive free lunch.
Due to a longstanding teacher shortage in our large district, my students begin high school woefully unprepared for the rigors of high school level mathematics.
Many have always failed their math classes. I have roughly 170 hours with them to get them up to grade level and able to handle the math they need for graduation and beyond.
95% of all the school supplies and technology my students used has heretofore been supplied personally by the teacher, or via donation.
My Project
Currently, my classroom has no tech for the students to handle and use, and students are using their personal cell phones, when available, to access helpful mathematics websites like Algebra Nation and Khan Academy. When their cell phones are lost, stolen, broken, or confiscated by adults as punishment, they lose all access to the educational benefits of technology.
Our state legislature has paid for our students to have access to Algebra Nation, a wonderful hands-on learning experience for 9th graders; however, the full benefit of this program cannot be accessed from the students' personal cell phones.
The students currently do not have access to tablets or computers either at home or in our school, which does not have a computer lab readily available to the students.
By putting some Android tablets into my students' hands, you will enable me to utilize Google classroom to monitor their progress. Our Algebra textbooks, which are not available on a cell phone screen, can be accessed with these tablets. With technology, students will be able to research minority and female mathematicians and begin to visualize what their futures could look like. By having tablets in my classroom, I could use them to get the students who come to me at a 4th or 5th grade math level up to speed without singling them out or embarrassing them. There is no limit to the things we could do with just a little hands-on technology in the mathematics classroom.
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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 Mrs. Hurley and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
