I'm a first year teacher. I'm not yet jaded by the unfair realities of the educational system in America. I have not given up on a single student yet. I beg each of my 10th - 12th graders not to give up on themselves every day. And yet I have suffered sleepless nights and severe exhaustion as I fight to overcome the enormous challenges at my struggling school. But this is not about me. This is about them.
My students are starving for excitement in their education. They love labs, demonstrations, and group hands-on learning activities. Yet they struggle during instructional time.
Students struggle for several reasons:
1. My classroom is long and narrow--students halfway back cannot access the information despite all of the methods I've tried out for enlarging the presented material.
2. Students have grown up in a media-saturated world. Slates, chalkboards, even overhead projectors have simply died out as effective forms of communication and MUST be replaced by interactive presentations to keep students engaged.
3. My classroom is over 25% special needs and 100% diverse learners with multiple intelligence modalities. It is extremely difficult to introduce a new concept or illustrate an idea with the current primitive teaching methods.
The missing link necessary for success in my science classroom is a multimedia LCD projector. With this projector, I can combine images, text, video clips, sounds, and animation to provide a fair learning opportunity for ALL students. Students can showcase their own learning achievements and learn valuable presentation skills with PowerPoint presentations. Discussions, brainstorms, and data collecting can appear in real time for visual learners. I will be able to move around the classroom to assist the learning disabled and struggling students while displaying new concepts with the click of a button.
Science MUST be a multimedia experience in today's society. I imagine uncovering a food web one link at a time or illustrating a current events issue such as the California wildfires with a news clip showing the devastation. I imagine students presenting their experimental results via PowerPoint or allowing students to type in their arguments (real-time!) in a debate on global warming. These are only a few of the endless possibilities that could unlock amazing student learning.
Place yourself in a student's shoes. What would stimulate your senses? What would inspire you to engage in discussion? What would help you fall in love with science learning?
Your help will make it possible for learning to come alive everyday in my classroom!
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
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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. Meixner and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.