{"monthlySchoolDonationEnabled":false,"callToActionDisplayName":"Hellgate Middle School 1","outOfStateSupporters":38.6,"allowSchoolLevelGiving":true,"hasFundedProjects":true,"projectGratitudeData":[{"teacherId":9634876,"projectId":9279083,"letterContent":"Thanks to your generous support, our band room has been filled with energy, creativity, and a renewed sense of excitement. The arrival of essential supplies like reeds, music, valve oil, cleaning kits, and more has made an immediate and powerful impact on our students.\r\n\r\nThese supplies have allowed us to dive fully into ensemble playing and focus on musicianship, not just maintenance. With access to high-quality reeds and functioning instruments, our woodwind players are now playing with better tone and confidence. Brass students are maintaining their instruments properly, which has helped reduce downtime and frustration. We also received new sheet music, which opened the door to performing more diverse and challenging repertoire.\r\n\r\nWhen students first saw the materials, their faces lit up. Some had never played on a brand-new reed or used proper cleaning tools before. Many shared their excitement, especially our younger musicians, who felt more empowered and motivated. It boosted their sense of belonging and responsibility in the band. One student told me, \"It's so much easier to play when you actually have the right stuff!\"\r\n\r\nRight now, we're working on preparing for our upcoming fall concert. With the new music we were able to order, we're exploring different musical styles—from classical to jazz—and discussing the cultural and historical context of each piece. Students are learning to listen critically, collaborate, and express themselves through performance.\r\n\r\nThanks to your support, my students are not only learning music—they're building confidence, community, and lifelong skills. Thank you for making that possible.","fullyFundedDate":1746787165180,"projectUrl":"project/band-essentials/9279083/","projectTitle":"Band Essentials","teacherDisplayName":"Mrs. Guidoni","teacherPhotoUrl":"https://storage.donorschoose.net/dc_prod/images/teacher/profile/orig/tp9634876_orig.jpg?crop=3000,3000,x0,y560&width=272&height=272&fit=bounds&auto=webp&t=1723066037964","teacherClassroomUrl":"classroom/9634876"},{"teacherId":6547841,"projectId":8743690,"letterContent":"Thank you for donating to my project for new interactive Spanish games! My students always enjoy competing against each other and it's a bonus when they are learning at the same time. These games focus on vocabulary and sentence structures, though they are blissfully unaware of these academic benefits. :) \r\n\r\nYesterday we played the Matamoscas vocabulary game. It's simple and quick activity to play for small chunks of time we have left in class. Students have been excited for new games to play on our jueves de juegos (game day Thursdays). \r\n\r\nWe appreciate your support. \r\n\r\n¡Gracias!","fullyFundedDate":1725798371655,"projectUrl":"project/i-love-sharing-spanish-with-my-students/8743690/","projectTitle":"I Love Sharing Spanish With My Students Through Interactive games.","teacherDisplayName":"Mrs. Gundlach","teacherPhotoUrl":"https://storage.donorschoose.net/dc_prod/images/teacher/profile/orig/tp6547841_orig.jpg?crop=897,897,x604,y1330&width=272&height=272&fit=bounds&auto=webp&t=1700330608006","teacherClassroomUrl":"classroom/6547841"},{"teacherId":9634876,"projectId":8586664,"letterContent":"We are so grateful for your generous support of our marching percussion project! Thanks to your contribution, our students have had an incredible opportunity to grow as musicians and performers.\r\n\r\nThe new marching percussion instruments have made a huge impact in our classroom. We've put them up where everyone can see them and each percussionist got to try them out. One of the most memorable moments so far has been when the students first received the new equipment. The excitement and joy were palpable as they saw the instruments for the first time. It was like a new energy filled the room!\r\n\r\nWith these new resources, we've been able to enhance our marching band routines. We recently started incorporating more advanced rhythms, and the students have been learning how to play with more precision and confidence. These instruments have allowed us to elevate our performances in a way we couldn't have before. We will debut them this spring at our March concert!\r\n\r\nNone of this would have been possible without your support. Your generosity has opened up new opportunities for our students, and we can't thank you enough. We are excited to continue building on this foundation and can't wait to see what these students achieve next!","fullyFundedDate":1733254926094,"projectUrl":"project/rhythmic-reverberations-triumphs-in-mar/8586664/","projectTitle":"Rhythmic Reverberations: Triumphs in Marching Percussion","teacherDisplayName":"Mrs. Guidoni","teacherPhotoUrl":"https://storage.donorschoose.net/dc_prod/images/teacher/profile/orig/tp9634876_orig.jpg?crop=3000,3000,x0,y560&width=272&height=272&fit=bounds&auto=webp&t=1723066037964","teacherClassroomUrl":"classroom/9634876"},{"teacherId":9747519,"projectId":8777136,"letterContent":"Thank you so much for the generous donation to my 7th grade mathematics class at Hellgate middle school. The donation was used to purchase a classroom set of Texas Instruments scientific calculators. A classroom set of calculators is helpful on several fronts. As you can imagine, seventh graders sometimes forget their materials in their locker or at home so we can save time and distractions from important instructional time easily by simply letting them borrow one for the day. More important is the opportunity to check out a calculator to disadvantaged students. A classroom set of calculators allows me to check out calculators on a short term or long term basis. \r\nStudents don't use calculators very often in my math classroom for the first half of the year, except to help them find percentages on their assignments. But, in late September, early October we prepare students for a community building field trip at a popular recreation area outside Missoula, Montana named Pattee Canyon. The field trip is named Treasure Meadows and has become a seventh grade tradition for over twenty years. It is modeled around the theme of the Lewis and Clark journey. The teachers like to describe the activity as a life sized game board, where teams of six race to complete challenges at six different stations. Successful completion of each station, earns them a piece of nonsensical code. After completing all six stations, students return to base camp to break the code which gives them directions to the treasure. Students have great fun, running around the forest, learning to work with each other toward a common goal.\r\nOne of the stations requires students to estimate the diameter of a wonderful large Ponderosa pine tree. To estimate the diameter requires students to use the value of Pi. Computations involving messy numbers like Pi is a great use of a calculator. In preparation for the field trip, students have to be introduced to the concept of circumference and become comfortable with the terminology. From there, I help them understand the connections, relationships and ideas amongst and between the different parts of a circle. Lastly, we talk about some different models to show how the circumference formula was developed. Next, we estimate some real world diameters of giant redwoods and a state landmark in Anaconda. The day before the field trip, we put our classroom knowledge into practice by measuring several trees and poles outside of the classroom on our campus, using our calculators to help us estimate their diameter. From the attached pictures, you can see that my students were very engaged in the activities both inside and outside the classroom. The classroom set of calculators were very convenient and helpful. We look forward to using them more often during the second half of the school year when we continue our study of geometric concepts and work with different types of proportion and percent applications. Thank you again, for your very generous donation.","fullyFundedDate":1726424123167,"projectUrl":"project/problem-solving/8777136/","projectTitle":"Problem Solving","teacherDisplayName":"Mr. Lorenz","teacherPhotoUrl":"https://cdn.donorschoose.net/images/placeholder-avatars/272/teacher-placeholder-10_272.png?auto=webp","teacherClassroomUrl":"classroom/9747519"},{"teacherId":5106215,"projectId":8777166,"letterContent":"Because of your donation, my students now have a working understanding about human body systems that they would not have otherwise. The ability to use the resources to model and detail the information in the text is irreplaceable! We have also affectionately named the skeleton \"Mr. Skellybones\" and he has become a part of our class. I am looking forward to our chemistry unit so that I can utilize the chemistry posters and atom model. I let my collegue borrow the model, and she said it helped immensly with student understanding! \r\n\r\nIn addition, my US map has been laminated and posted on the wall, and we are actively tracking the growth of the colonies and the United States. It's so interesting to see the growth of our country and how the borders have changed over time!\r\n\r\nThank you again for helping me to take my instruction to the next level and help even the must reluctant learners succeed.","fullyFundedDate":1726445411589,"projectUrl":"project/from-textbook-to-tangible-scientific-li/8777166/","projectTitle":"From Textbook to Tangible: Scientific Literacy Tools for Teens","teacherDisplayName":"Mrs. Diehl","teacherPhotoUrl":"https://storage.donorschoose.net/dc_prod/images/teacher/profile/orig/tp5106215_orig.jpg?crop=281,281,x212,y149&width=272&height=272&fit=bounds&auto=webp&t=1726443237804","teacherClassroomUrl":"classroom/5106215"},{"teacherId":9732410,"projectId":8743295,"letterContent":"Thank you for your donation. My students have thoroughly enjoyed the graphic novels in the collection. They have made connections to other school work, their own lives, and the world around them through these graphic novels. Some students have felt motivated to create their own comic strips and graphic novel stories because they were inspired by these books. When given a choice of books to read, many students will navigate to the graphic novel section, which really captures their interest and motivates them to read. \r\n\r\nThe whiteboards are frequently used in class for writing and connecting to reading with sketches. We love how accessible they are and it allows students to conserve paper. They can sketch ideas for their writing and/or sketch ideas about the books we read, and then we can share them and discuss them more easily. Thank you again for sparking interest in young readers and helping them stay engaged and motivated in their education.","fullyFundedDate":1725765136859,"projectUrl":"project/graphic-novels-for-novel-students/8743295/","projectTitle":"Graphic Novels for Novel Students","teacherDisplayName":"Ms. Donovan","teacherPhotoUrl":"https://cdn.donorschoose.net/images/placeholder-avatars/272/teacher-placeholder-6_272.png?auto=webp","teacherClassroomUrl":"classroom/9732410"},{"teacherId":9634876,"projectId":8742787,"letterContent":"Thanks to your generous support, the new marker boards, posters, and music theory tools have made an incredible impact in our classroom, transforming both teaching and learning in ways we couldn't have imagined before. The large marker boards have become a central part of our lessons, allowing students to engage with music theory concepts in real-time. For example, during a recent unit on chord progressions, we used the boards to write and revise examples as a class. This hands-on activity encouraged students to work collaboratively and gave them a clearer understanding of how theory applies directly to the music they play. The colorful posters around the room serve as visual aids, reinforcing key concepts like intervals, scales, and key signatures, making it easier for students to reference and absorb information as they work.\r\n\r\nLooking ahead, we're diving deeper into a composition project where students will apply their music theory knowledge to write their own original pieces. The music theory tools you helped provide will be instrumental in guiding them through the process. We'll be using the boards to map out chord structures and progressions, while the posters will serve as constant references to reinforce new ideas. Your contribution has not only enhanced our classroom environment but also inspired a sense of excitement and creativity that I know will fuel my students' passion for music well beyond this project. Thank you for helping bring these resources to life in our classroom!","fullyFundedDate":1725757326432,"projectUrl":"project/music-literacy-in-the-band-room/8742787/","projectTitle":"Music Literacy in the Band Room","teacherDisplayName":"Mrs. Guidoni","teacherPhotoUrl":"https://storage.donorschoose.net/dc_prod/images/teacher/profile/orig/tp9634876_orig.jpg?crop=3000,3000,x0,y560&width=272&height=272&fit=bounds&auto=webp&t=1723066037964","teacherClassroomUrl":"classroom/9634876"}],"pageName":"schoolpage_59566","usesDonorsChoose":true,"infoPageType":"school","demographicsInfo":{"numStudents":300,"numTeachers":25,"percentFrplEligible":40,"percentAsian":0,"percentBlack":0,"percentWhite":83,"percentIndigenous":4,"percentLatinx":2,"showFreeAndReducedPriceLunchInfo":true,"showDemographicsInfo":true,"sourceTooltipString":"the National Center for Education Statistics","gradesServed":"7 - 8","studentTeacherRatio":"12.0:1","demographicsDataSource":"MDR School","equityFocus":false,"titleOne":false,"metroType":"URBAN","ncesMetroType":"CITY_SMALL"},"inStateSupporters":61.4,"schoolId":59566,"financialInfo":null,"twitterShareText":"Learn more about Hellgate Middle School 1 on @DonorsChoose:","schoolName":"Hellgate Middle School 1","canonicalPageUrl":"schools/montana/hellgate-elem-school-dist-4/hellgate-middle-school-3/59566"}