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.
I work in an underprivileged community where the crime rate is one of the highest in Los Angeles. My students are faced with the crude reality of drugs, gangs, and violence at a very young age. I teach 3rd grade students (7-9 year olds) and in their short lived lives, they have witnessed gang shootings outside their homes, drug deals in their backyards, and even death in their courtyard. In a world of so much violence, my students are forced to grow up much too fast and with limited opportunities to escape. That is why I choose to teach them about worlds that are beyond their dreams while acknowledging the importance of their roots.
As I begin my third year of teaching it is much clearer to me the difficulties I face to close the achievement gap among my students. I have visited many classrooms in more privileged areas of LA to become knowledgeable of the differences among the resources at our school and theirs— technology is the number one discrepancy. What to us is a dream (computer labs, LCD projectors, technology lessons) to many schools it is the norm. At our school, we have good teachers, we have good students, we have a good parent community, but we lack resources to teach. Teachers end up spending many hours making photo copies, retyping student work and using limited visuals to teach.
My classroom is made up of 20 students whom are learning English at different rates and levels. As all research show visuals and artifacts are essential in acquiring language. For this very reason I would to take my teaching to a new level. I would like to create interactive lessons on the web, to use a limitless source of photos and other resources to bring life to my lessons and enhance student comprehension. I believe that technology will contribute greatly to my student's education and personal lives. As it is part of California 3rd Grade Standards, I would love to introduce social studies units with projections of maps, photos and other visuals to transport my students back to the Mayflower or inside the White House, for example.
The use of an LCD projector in the classroom offers endless opportunities for students to grasp vocabulary with the aid of concrete examples that can be shared with them in the moment via a projected image from my laptop. This is only the beginning. I will create powerpoint presentations to teach science, reading, writing, and music among many other subjects. I will project student work samples so we can edit paragraphs as a class and learn from our mistakes. The opportunities are endless and I am sure that new ideas will spring up as I incorporate this technology to my students’ daily lives.
I am reaching out to you hoping to make this dream a reality. I invite you to be part of this process to close the achievement gap in a classroom full of bright, young people whom must fight everyday against all the challenges that comes with living in poverty.
Nearly all students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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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. Santos and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
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