Past projects 107
Book Wish List 2
Funded Jan 29, 2022I know I say this a lot butttttt... my students are OBSESSED with wordless picture books. Obsessed is probably an understatement. They could watch me "read" these books for hours. They too could "read" these books themselves for hours. I don't know if I already told you, but when 'read' the first picture book this year, I've never seen a group of students write more. It was miraculous how much they were writing about each page. Each writer was so proud to share how much they wrote. Then I let them share their interpretation with their classmates was cool to see just how similar and different their perceptions were.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Potrzeba
Books a Billion!
Funded Dec 1, 2021This project was cool because in science we had learning about pollination and the Honeybee book taught just how important that was. Because that inspired us, we started growing a variety of plants: Sunflowers, soybeans, pea seeds, and parsley, lavender. On top of that we hatched butterflies and are in the process of hatching praying mantises. I totally forgot to share the photos! I'm so SORRY! King Tut on the other hand inspired a rebellion against ME!?! The class wanted to create their own set of rules and so..they did. They learned very quickly it's not so easy running a classroom. LOL”
With gratitude,
Mr. Potrzeba
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and 8 other donors.Books a Quintillion!
Funded Dec 4, 2021SO MANY BOOKS! This project had a little of everything. Students read about about the 21 steps soldiers take at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, pumpkins, some incredible black history books, turkeys and easter! In a time when students have to do workbook after workbook, test after test, books in this collection helped them learn about the holidays and other races of people that look just like them. Sometimes, that isn't the case in the assignments we do. That's why you are an important piece helping students see the world!”
With gratitude,
Mr. Potrzeba
Books a Trillion!
Funded Dec 4, 2021Y'all just created 24 astronauts, astronomers, and scientists, and you didn't even know it! Because of books like Look to the Stars, 13 Planets: The Latest View of the Solar System, have my students OBSESSED WITH SPACE! Every year, I kick off the school year wearing an astronaut suit. This signifies that I always wanted to be an astronaut, but when a teacher told me I'll never be one, I believed her and gave up my dream. In return I became a teacher to preach just the opposite: always chase your dreams, shoot for infinity and beyond. I'll always be there to support them. Thank you for giving me and my students more books to chase our dreams!”
With gratitude,
Mr. Potrzeba
Reading Bookshelves
Funded Jan 3, 2022This bookshelf was absolutely needed! It's the first multi-use bookshelf we have in our classroom and my readers LOVE it! That's actually an understatement. It's their favorite place to read and do their homework. One bookshelf can fit 3 readers, butttttt usually you can find 4. But thanks to all of you, we need even more bookshelves and I literally have no idea where I'm going to put them. Is it possible to have floating bookshelves because we need them ASAP? Maybe I'll have to have my student engineers nail bookshelves into our walls?! Either way, thank you for giving us more places to put our books. We need them!”
With gratitude,
Mr. Potrzeba
The Bilingual Classroom
Funded Nov 30, 2021I love this project and so do my students! It's been incredible to see them own the classroom. Not a day goes by where we don't hear a new english word, a new Spanish word, and a new french word. Yes, you saw that correctly, french! The beautiful part to this project is that inspired one student to hear french. So one day she came to me asking if she could teach the class a french word of the day, and of course I said YES! So now it's common to hear us in the hallways, in the classroom, and on field trips thank each other in english, Spanish, and french!”
With gratitude,
Mr. Potrzeba
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and one other donor.Science Experiments & STEM Challenges
Funded Oct 12, 2021The STEM supplies for science was so needed! Thank you for your support in helping create astronauts, engineers, and construction workers! Students had to construct a device out the the materials you gave us to blow away and clean up the "snowball dilemma." The creativeness I saw from students was incredible! Since it's spring students had to create a butterfly out of tissue paper. Other students had to create a claw to grab cups of water, instead of their own. Recently, we hatched chicks. All these experiences and experiments have been powerful in creating our next scientists!”
With gratitude,
Mr. Potrzeba
Holiday Gifts
Funded Nov 30, 2021This was one of the most magical projects I've ever done! It took months of pre-planning, and last minute finalization, but the result was ...pure joy! This year, you helped make 25 Holidays (mine included) a little bit more special. When students opened up with gift bags, they had, 1 pencil, 4 hot chocolate Kisses, 1 hot coca power, 2 different kinds of candy canes, 3 mints, a funny pen, a poppet, a fidget spinner poppet, a rubric cube type toy, and my favorite book: The Wild Robot. This was the most I've ever given a class. I literally couldn't have done it without you. The joy on their faces was priceless. One girl was in tears! Another boy, who's relationship with me has been challenging started a class chant "Mr. Potrzeba is the best teacher!" Finally, another student said, "I've always wanted one of these." (That was a surprise to me.) I can't do this without you. This was the best Holiday surprise I've ever given my students. Thank you for being a HUGE part of it. Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year with good health to you and your family!”
With gratitude,
Mr. Potrzeba
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and 2 other donors.A Work in Progress...Through Books!
Funded Oct 21, 2021You know what makes me happy? Eating pizza and riding rollercoasters! Ha! You thought I was going to say books. Welllllllll that's true too. Unfortunately, it's difficult to be motivated to read. Last weekend, I was able to finally sit down and read again. It felt so good to sit down and read without any time constants. As you know, I'm driven to be the best teacher I can be. Although, you might want me to read books not related to education, it truly fills my cup to learn more about being a teacher. It instantly had an impact on my classroom the following day. I created a How I am board that shares with me privately how a child is feeling about what they just learned. Their names are not on the sticky notes and it instantly tells me, who I can help right away and who's feeling good about the lesson. That's game changing!”
With gratitude,
Mr. Potrzeba
This classroom project was brought to life by Dollar General Literacy Foundation and 4 other donors.Maximizing Indoor & Outdoor Recess
Funded Oct 7, 2021First and foremost, thank you for funding this project. You are amazing! Secondly, this project has actually impacted other classrooms. Seriously! When a teacher found out I had ANOTHER project funded, they reached out to me for help. Long behold after working with them, they created a similar project and got it funded! Now their students' recess is a little more fun! How cool! Also, our dean works with students and enjoys playing games to get to know them...so who did he reach out to? He reached to me. Yes, my students are attempting to break world records as you see in the image, but what I'm also proud of is the impact these games are having in our entire school. It's been really cool!”
With gratitude,
Mr. Potrzeba
This classroom project was brought to life by #TeachHealthy with Nature Made and 3 other donors.