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Ms. A.'s Classroom

  • Leodis V McDaniel High School
  • Portland, OR
  • 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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Past projects 17

  • Books to Inspire Climate Justice

    Funded Jun 26, 2023

    I'm elated to be able to offer these resources to my students next school year. Our climate justice unit last semester had students engaged and energized. Students noticed, though, that I didn't hook them in with our usual children's books and some of our English Language Learners struggled to engage with complex text without the support of imagery and entry points that these books could have offered. Thank you for supporting my classroom!”

    With gratitude,

    Ms. A.

    This classroom project was brought to life by Neukom Family Foundation and 7 other donors.
  • Finding Peace & Joy With Mindfulness Tools & Games

    Funded Dec 17, 2022

    Thank you so much for providing these resources for my students. Access to coloring has really changed my classroom. They have unplugged so much more from phones and are using coloring as a way to cope with a lot of post-pandemic anxiety. Many of the coloring sheets are directly tied to our content of climate change unit so that's been an extra plus.

    Our puzzle corner and games like Jenna, Uno, and Spot It has attracted students at lunch giving them a safe space in school to gather. It has also been a great incentive for students to stay on task and finish work early. They have me helped us build community and connect!”

    With gratitude,

    Ms. A.

  • Books to Inspire

    Funded Jan 19, 2023

    Thank you so much for giving my students the opportunity to give my students access to children’s books that represent their diverse gender and racial identities! I’m so excited to have these for students as they start connecting the topic of gender in Latin America to their own lives.”

    With gratitude,

    Ms. A.

    This classroom project was brought to life by Panda Cares.
  • Learning to Use Children's Books to Build Empathy

    Funded Aug 15, 2022

    I cannot thank you enough for supporting this project. With the support of these rich and accessible stories, my freshmen were able to create their own historical fictions. The turn in rate jumped from 76% in previous years to almost 100%!

    They placed themselves in 1976 in South Africa and pulled from the Hector Peterson book to learn more about what a typical teen job in Soweto was like. They placed themselves in Apartheid resistance meetings and used the Mama Africa book to add Miriam Makeba and her music to the scene. They read about Nelson Mandela and wrote a story from the perspective of his daughter carrying on his legacy. They read the Soccer Fence and wrote an inspiring story about South Africans trying to play soccer on an integrated team.

    These books were especially helpful to my English Language Learners who struggle sometimes to connect with more dense reading in the class. With the support of the children's picture books, they were able to visualize what they had been trying to piece together.”

    With gratitude,

    Ms. A.

    This classroom project was brought to life by J.W. Couch Foundation and one other donor.
  • School Supplies Restock!

    Funded Sep 23, 2022

    Thank you for helping me start the year off right. We've had so much fun these first few weeks doing table challenges with our whiteboards but are markers are low on ink and we're out of erasers! Students are excited for these materials, especially! I can't wait to use our marker set for our colonial action project where students will model colonial resistance around the world and tell stories of indigenous resilience.”

    With gratitude,

    Ms. A.

  • Transformative Justice Facilitation Tools

    Funded Sep 16, 2020

    It has been hard to truly put the impact of these tools in our school community. With COVID shutting down in person learning for a couple of years, finding ways to connect and troubleshoot in this online world was imperative. We used these books and ideas to create a better school community and shift systems that were inequitable long before the pandemic.

    Students who formed a part of the Equity Committee at our school used a lot of these prompts for their weekly meetings and then took inspiration from the texts to form the school's new anti-hate speech policies and racial equity statements.

    This group of graduating seniors, sophomores at the time we received the texts, are now proud leaders for justice and a lot of that work stemmed from these models along with their rich life experiences. So thank you so much!”

    With gratitude,

    Ms. A.

    This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose 20th Anniversary Fund and one other donor.
  • Building Relationships Toward Justice

    Funded Sep 1, 2020

    Thank you SO much for your support. The materials that you were funded empowered staff and students to completely change the way we approach relationships and restorative justice in our building.

    Last year, we were completely online. Despite this moment of disconnection, we were able to pause and reground ourselves in the necessity of building community. Our school created an advisory class where all students would have a Home Base for them to process school/world happenings in a safer space. We created weekly advisory classes using the table topics cards to come up with fun questions for advisory community circle questions and it was a BLAST! It gave us a nice break from the harsh realities so many of us and our students were facing outside school. It also created openings for students to share a bit about how they were processing those harsh realities.

    The books that were funded built teacher capacity for facilitating those fun and deeper conversations with students. We had book groups and accountability/action plans to bring more community driven and socio-emotional learning opportunities to staff and student learning times. Teachers and students both reported that some of the RJ books on race were particularly helpful.”

    With gratitude,

    Ms. A.

  • Black Out for Hoodies Up Day

    Funded Jan 20, 2020

    Thank you so much for your generous donations to our community. Our students are busy at work to create the last of over 350(!) new black posters that will go up on the walls of our school for our annual Hoodies Up Day event. They will be put up alongside 2 years of previous posters to black out our school.

    All of our Ethnic Studies students created posters dedicated to black change-makers that inspire them and embody black power. We also had 3 open banner making events where dozens of community members came to create posters illustrating black lives matter and showing solidarity. The glitter, black butcher paper, paints and brushes were heavily used and loved.

    The energy is high at our school and we couldn't have done it without you! Happy Black History Month to all.”

    With gratitude,

    Ms. A.

  • Engaging Texts for Ethnic Studies

    Funded Aug 19, 2019

    Wow! It has been an awesome first month of Ethnic Studies classes and we couldn't have done it without your generous support. My students are pumped to learn more and use engaging texts that allow people of different ethnicities to tell their own stories.

    We opened the year with comparing what our district mandated textbook had to say about Latinx movements to the book Harvest of Empire. We saw how the story was enriched by the Puerto Rican author's personal experience. We read about Ronald Takaki's experience in a taxi cab when the driver asked where he was from (Takaki is American). My students responded with poems with some serious attitude. They were beautiful and powerful and a great way to start off our year and cover our class walls with their words.

    Today, in honor of the Global Climate Strike, we are looking at Indigenous People's History and talking about how indigenous people have been fighting to stay in harmony with the planet for more than 500 years as protectors of water and land. Next week, we will use the text to challenge the incomplete story of Pocahontas and talk back to those who create single stories about marginalized groups.”

    With gratitude,

    Ms. A.

    This classroom project was brought to life by An Anonymous Funder and 5 other donors.
  • Class Journals for Future Changemakers

    Funded Sep 30, 2019

    Thank you so much for contributing to my classroom! It was so nice to be able to provide each student with a journal at the beginning of our South Africa unit.

    They have been looking at different methods of resistance used in South Africa and comparing and contrasting them in their notebook using our post it's to color code PRO's and CON's.

    They wrote a story as if they were a South African student in Soweto before the end of apartheid and imagined their resistance. They used highlighters to point out places that showed their character's strengths.

    Every student has a pen and pencil they can use, every student has materials they need to be successful, and every student is using these new items to review what they wrote in their journals. I believe that this solidifies and strengthens learning. At the end of the year, students will have all this work to look back on as an artifact of their growth as a writer, thinker, and student. We are so grateful!”

    With gratitude,

    Ms. A.

    This classroom project was brought to life by District Partnership Program and one other donor.
I teach Gender Studies, Social Studies, & Leadership in a high-poverty neighborhood. Many of my students are below-grade-level. The school where I teach is a diverse public high school: 23% of students are African American, 19% Hispanic, 16% Asian, 2% Native American, and 36% Caucasian. Many of my students struggle with challenges outside of school. Over 70% of our students are below the poverty line. Many students are in the foster care system or are homeless. Many are recent immigrants learning English as a second language. I have amazing students who use their diversity and life experiences to their advantage.

About my class

I teach Gender Studies, Social Studies, & Leadership in a high-poverty neighborhood. Many of my students are below-grade-level. The school where I teach is a diverse public high school: 23% of students are African American, 19% Hispanic, 16% Asian, 2% Native American, and 36% Caucasian. Many of my students struggle with challenges outside of school. Over 70% of our students are below the poverty line. Many students are in the foster care system or are homeless. Many are recent immigrants learning English as a second language. I have amazing students who use their diversity and life experiences to their advantage.

About my class

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