My students need a copy machine and toner! Our school has one copy machine for the entire school that the debate team cannot use. With over 80 students on the debate team and growing, we greatly need a copy machine to keep up with our debaters and also benefit the entire school.
$6,710 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
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.
Our school is located next to the Bronx jail where there is a daily line of inmates coming in and out. On the other side of the street is the criminal courts where there is a daily line of criminal cases. The South Bronx is known more for poverty, crime, drugs, gangs, and failing schools than academic opportunities. However, our school, three years ago, started a debate team – the only school in the South Bronx with a debate team. It has grown to nearly 100 students from grades 7th-12th. Their academic abilities range from special education to valedictorian. Their background ranges from abuse, mental institutionalization to perfect attendance. Their behavior ranges from regularly suspended to model student. But they are all united by their passion and love for debating. They spend their days learning about debate, evenings in debate practice, weekends at debate tournaments and summers at debate camps.
Over the past three years our school has become the largest urban debate team in New York City and the United States. We are the only school in the South Bronx that has a debate team. We have won awards and championships across the city and along the East Coast. Debate motivates our students to learn about current events, read philosophy, research public policy, study economics, practice public speaking skills and numerous other academic skills. Debate empowers our students to overcome so many obstacles in one of the poorest congressional districts in America. Debate is a social vehicle for our students to build a community, meet new friends, have fun while learning, travel and learn about different cities. Debate is a vehicle to college because our debaters read college level texts, take college level notes, read at college level speeds, and travel to colleges for tournaments! There is no better college prep activity debate. Especially considering that the vast majority of colleges have debate teams and actively recruit high school debaters.
We have accomplished all this without a budget! We rely on my own paycheck, family contributions, donations, DonorsChoose, and fundraisers. And so we write this letter in an attempt to bring the most important but also most costly necessity to our school - a copy machine. Our school, like most schools in the Bronx, only has one copy machine that is often not working. For that reason the Debate Team is not allowed to use the machine. With about 100 debaters carrying backpacks filled with files of evidence, our paper needs are enormous. We currently have several small printers that are keeping our program alive. But they require hours of slow printing, tons of toner, and lack all the features of a printer. So it has become a necessity no matter how long it takes, no matter how many proposals we have to write - to try to obtain a copy machine for our school and our Debate Team. It would not only benefit our team and ensure that our students have the same resources as all the top wealthy prep schools, but it would also benefit our school as a whole.
Our program is very special in the South Bronx. There is nothing else like it. In the past couple months the accomplishments of our students have been recognized in the newspapers and even on television. At our state championships our debaters brought first place awards back home. And so this proposal is to keep the learning growing exponentially, keep the resources growing exponentially, and keep the dreams growing exponentially so that our students will have no obstacles.
Thanks!
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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 Mr. Fogel and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.