After some very long days of cleaning and scrubbing and reorganizing, our room is sparkling, orderly and ready to be made a mess! Every unit and new idea will be introduced with a lab or a demonstration that gets students' gears turning. Now I just need a couple of tables that won't burn or dissolve....
Our school is a small public high school in the Lower East Side in Manhattan.
We serve a diverse population of 350 students from all 5 boroughs. At our school, we prepare all of our students for success in college and in life, by treating them as individuals with specific strengths and needs, and appealing to their intellectual curiosity in our courses. Our emphasis is on academic achievement, coupled with the emotional support students need to be successful, which gives our graduates the best chance of being successful at the college of their choice.
After just two short weeks, I can tell that our students are immensely grateful for the care and dedication of staff here. The students and faculty are a close-knit community. Respect is high, expectations are clear, and there's a ton of warmth.
My Project
My students need two mobile lab tables with chemical-resistant tops so the room will not catch fire when the demo does. During our first lab day, there were so many hazards, I could feel the knot of stress in my gut: the narrow space between where bags are kept and where students go to gather materials, led to too many near-crashes between students carrying chemicals and students who hadn't put their goggles on yet; the existing mobile table was wooden. Spills seeped into the scrapes in the varnish and misplaced drops of many chemicals could eat away at it in a day. Furthermore, there was a giant, gaping, unused, sad black hole of space in the back corner that was just begging for demo tables.
Students will get the most use out of demo tables in that space during lab days. And in a science class, lab days should be happening all the time! These resources are going to be especially important during our big lab for this unit: The Copper Cycle. Students will be in self-directed lab mode for two full days, as they transform copper into six different compounds with a variety of chemical reactions.
It will be clear that this is a room with a purpose, instead of a weirdly arranged afterthought.
Having new laboratory demonstration tables would clarify a designated area for lab equipment and materials in our classroom. Students will be set up for success instead of accidents!
More than half of 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
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