My first grade class is one of 14 classrooms in our First and Second grade school. We serve around 350+ first graders each year. I have around 23-25 students in my class each year. My students come from a variety of backgrounds but majority come from low socioeconomic status. Our school is a title I school and 86% of our students are at a free/reduced lunch status. We serve free breakfast to all students each day. My students are poor and usually 75% of my students' parents are unemployed and receive help from the government to survive. Most of them come in with little to no supplies and have no drive or motivation to learn. They are purely on survival mode. It is my job to change that mode to GO MODE!

Our community has recently taken a direct hit of devastation by two of our major industries closing their operations and shutting down. The buildings which used to house more than 6000+ workers have now been stripped down and auctioned off piece by piece. Many of our families are facing hard times and are looking to the local, state, and national government for help and support. In the midst of all of this I want to take my students on a trip away from the classroom and across the nation by following the presidential elections via the Internet. We need a laptop/notebook computer that we can keep set up as a constant virtual tour keeping tabs on the election. I will use this tool to teach students all aspects of the voting/election process as well as hold a mock election ourselves for class officers.

Our classroom will have a "Presidential Corner" consisting of our laptop notebook computer along with other election materials/tools I have already purchased, such as children's books relating to voting and elections, a voting ballot box, tally charts, ballot pads, stickers for voting, maps with little flags to notate important places being discussed in relation to the campaign, charts and posters for students to document information found using the laptop, and election journals for each student to write in after getting a daily update on the elections via our new laptop/notebook in the "Presidential Corner". My students will use the laptop specifically for but not limited to just the elections. It is important for our students to know there is a big world out there that they can be a part of and that they too can be a part of making history. Who knows...maybe one of them will be president one day.

Wouldn't you love to hear 20-30 years from now a President of the United States say that he or she would not have made the choice to aspire to be what he has become today if it hadn't been for that year in first grade when his teacher created the "Presidential Corner" with this cool Laptop that he was actually able to touch and use as much as he wanted and that memory had always stayed in his mind? Don't you want to be a part of making history? We may never know if the things that we did to teach students about social studies, history, and life made a difference or not, but we have to do EVERYTHING we can to try!