Have you seen the needs of students or their families come up? Sometimes the needs are met, and other times they fall in between the cracks and are overlooked. Unfortunately, the latter seems to be the situation for students and families if there is no organization, school liaison, or a generous donor from the community or school to help meet the needs or connect the families with resources that can help meet the needs they have. One digital resource that I have found very beneficial to help meet my students’ needs is DonorsChoose.
I started teaching in South Kansas City in a Title I district that consistently has close to a 100% Free and Reduced Lunch Rate. The students served are from low-income families or low-income areas which leads to a reduced number of educational opportunities and resources that may be available to them. These families may or may not be able to provide their student(s) with the necessary supplies for school, not only physical school supplies but also some may also have food insecurities not knowing if or when they will have a meal. Some students even come into school having concerns about their safety; they are in a fight or flight state because of circumstances outside of their control that happen at home.
Walking into my first-year teaching, I had never heard of DonorsChoose, but my grade-level team had used it before and suggested that I use it for any resources I might need for the class. I decided that because I taught PreK and because the other PreK classes offered snacks in the afternoon I would use DonorsChoose to make a project for class snacks instead of asking families to provide this for their students for the reasons listed above.
DonorsChoose is an online resource that teachers create projects of necessary supplies that they themselves or their school cannot cover the total expenses of. I have used it for class snacks and for some beginning of the year supplies that went over the budget my school had set for the teachers. When teachers create a project for supplies, they can choose what vendor the supplies come from, and they can share it on social media or via email to friends and family to raise awareness so that donors can choose to help fund the project.
Sometimes, friends and family members donate, but also strangers from all over the state have donated to my projects. Sometimes big-name companies also match donations made to projects like during teacher appreciation week or if the project is related to a specific topic.
DonorsChoose makes representing your class, students, and their needs for various supplies easy because, when teachers create their project, they describe their students and how the supplies will impact their learning. Once projects are fully funded DonorsChoose will send supplies directly to the school with the teacher’s name on them.
DonorsChoose is one online platform where teacher have the opportunity to share what they believe their students need and how it will impact their learning. Through the projects, teachers are able to share what they do in their classrooms with many individuals who want to support teachers and all that they do on a daily basis. DonorsChoose acts as a catalyst for how teachers and their classrooms are represented, and if teachers do not represent themselves or their students well, they may not receive donations for their projects.
This image is linked to my current DonorsChoose project for you to look at as an example.
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