Yes, the economy is tanking. Yes, the news seems almost all bad. But if you have a few dollars to spare, there’s an organization called Donors Choose that has a website where you can help children all over the country get things they need for their schools. You can choose by state and type of project. I found a few that I think are extremely worthy causes just browsing my two home states.
In New Jersey, the Battle of the Books needs money. Like to read? This class teaches students just how to do that.
Help first graders learn about real American heroes, not celebrities—donate money to buy these books for a poor school in rural Virginia.
Give the gift of music. Did you learn how to play the recorder in elementary school? I did. Did you have to pay for it? I didn’t. Buy thirty recorders and remember how incredibly painful the sound of a recorder tooting “Mary Had A Little Lamb” can be, and then be glad that you don’t have to hear it. Then think about that child ten years from now, and how wonderful the music will be.
Fourth graders, my favorite year: They need a new microscope. And how cool is it that a digital microscope can take a digital picture and then print it out so that you can actually see a picture of that amoeba that you had to draw way back when?
These kids don’t even have the right size chairs. This is pathetic. Children can’t concentrate if they’re not comfortable. There are a few things I learned teaching fourth grade, and that’s you can’t teach hungry children, and you can’t teach children if you can’t get them to pay attention because their classroom surroundings aren’t right.
Feel free to browse your state and post the URL in the comments. Although you may need to go to tinyurl.com if you don’t know how to make it an href.
A quick HTML lesson: Use the angle brackets instead of regular brackets, but create a hyperlink like this:
[a href=”URL_Goes_Here”]Text goes here[/a]
That would turn out like this:
You can always tell when you’ve forgotten the double quotes. The link won’t work.
In any case: Choose. Donate. Post, if you want. You don’t have to tell us how much. Just that you picked one. I’m not teaching this year, but I can still help students. Via Sarah.