Mrs. Drake's Classroom Edit display name

Current requests

Past projects 15

• Novel Study to Spark Book Communities

  Funded Dec 31, 2024

  My students will be so excited to hear about this funded project when we return to school for winter break! Thank you for graciously donating to our classroom. These books will be used to start mini book clubs in my classroom and my hope is that it will continue to spark a love of reading to even my most apprehensive teens. Thank you again!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Drake

  This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and 5 other donors.

• Books and the Beach

  Funded Sep 27, 2024

  Thank you for your generous donation to my 8ty grade classroom. These books will be wonderful additions to my classroom library, and will aid in my pursuit to help child literacy and encourage reading as a hobby for all young people. Thank you from me and my 110 students; we are so thankful!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Drake

• New Year, New Books

  Funded Jan 14, 2023

  Thank you for helping to fund another project for the Drake classroom! Your kindness and generosity is helping more than 75 students have access to books that will continue to instill a life-long love of reading! I cannot wait to see the faces of those excited kids when the books arrive. That is priceless, if you ask me! Thank you”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Drake

• Back to School

  Funded Aug 16, 2022

  The start of the school year comes new faces to love and teach, but it also requires a lot of supplies that can create quite the financial burden on me. I try and make sure my classroom is stocked with everything my students need to be successful, but that is impossible for me to do alone. That is where DonorsChoose comes in! This project was incredibly important for starting my year off on the right foot! With your help, I was able to stock my classroom with supplies from pencils to staplers, organizational tools, and many new book titles I knew would grasp the attention of my new students.

  I have attached a picture of the lazy Susan organizer tool I was able to get through funding. This surprisingly has been one of my most used items from this project. It has come in handy helping me to have things easily accessible which cuts down on time in class. As a teacher, you don't really have time to look for things, so having binder clips, sharpies, and my projector remote inches away from me has been a lifesaver!

  I have also attached a picture of some of the book titles that have been most popular so far this year. They Both Die at the End was a book I received from this project and to this date, it is my most checked out book with a waitlist! That is exactly the kind of eagerness to read that I want to maintain in my classroom and DonorsChoose helps me achieve that by allowing me to "purchase" popular books at faster speeds that I could with my own wallet.

  Thank you so much again for your support; we are so appreciative!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Drake

  This classroom project was brought to life by Charles Schwab and 4 other donors.

• Bridging the (Achievement) Gap with Books

  Funded Dec 18, 2021

  A goal of mine this year was to continue to expand my diverse classroom library. I am always trying to find titles with themes that can appeal to all backgrounds and beliefs. I want my students to have a selection of books to choose from with characters that look like them and act like them because that is often times when the beauty of self-discovery can take place between the pages.

  The majority of the use of these books comes from the silent reading time I do in each of my classes. Students have free reign to choose any book they wish and I make a point of displaying my new titles and organizing them by genre. I have taught a couple of the books specifically and used them as reference materials in my lessons. For example, I mentioned The Rose that Grew from Concrete, a collection of poems by Tupac Shakur during a poetry unit this month. I also plan to reference Unbound by Tarana Burke later on as an example of memoir for when my students write personal narratives.

  The generosity of this donation is not lost on me in the slightest. I am so grateful to have my shelves filled to the brim and have the ability to constantly circulate new titles to different students. Sometimes, my students even recommend books to each other! Thank you for making the life of a teacher somewhat easier. Thank you for giving me more of the financial freedom to teach what I know my students need to learn. We are so grateful!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Drake

  This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and 7 other donors.

• Classroom Library Refresh

  Funded Oct 22, 2021

  As soon as my project was funded, I began talking to my students about some of the titles that were on their way to our classroom. Luckily for us, Amazon got our books to us within the same week. I had to borrow our office secretary's "mail cart" and definitely resembled the food trolley on the Hogwarts Express. When the books arrived, I had a four feet tall stack of them waiting to be shelved and labeled correctly for book checkout, and about 15 8th graders wondering what was taking me so long.

  In the three weeks I have had these books, about 10 of them have been read to completion, and two copies have a waiting list, I would say that is success! Thank you to Donors Choose for giving teachers a space like this to help fund our classrooms with books that spark smiles for my students. I also want to say thank you to my donors for believing in my classroom and my students. I will never be able to get over the excitement when my students know these new books are just for them. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Drake

  This classroom project was brought to life by Dollar General Literacy Foundation and 8 other donors.

• Out of My Mind for Building Empathy

  Funded Jun 14, 2019

  With COVID spreading like wildfire last year, and shutting down schools, it was incredibly helpful to have this class set of books on hand. It made lesson planning from home that much easier, and my students really enjoyed getting to experience reading a Memoir, which was a first for some of them. In fact, this project sparked my desire to create an entire unit of Memoirs for my students to experience. My students will read a Memoir with me in class, and then we will begin writing our own Memoirs! Thank you so much for making this possible!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Drake

• A New Book to Hook

  Funded Sep 30, 2019

  The ironic thing about the pictures I have uploaded for this "thank you package" is that they are of students that usually gripe about silent reading time in my class. They used to find anything they could to distract themselves from reading time or to get out of it entirely, but every single one of them volunteered to be in these pictures because that is how much they are now enjoying reading time. If that doesn't explain how thankful I am (and they are) for the opportunity you have given us to buy new book, then I don't know what would! Thank you!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Drake

  This classroom project was brought to life by SONIC Drive-In.

• How Many Books Is Too Many?

  Funded Sep 30, 2019

  I often struggle with writing these thank you letters when new books were the gift I received, because often times the appreciation of the books is built over time and sometimes a book sits on the shelf for years before the right student picks it up and gives it a chance. I try and ask the opinions of my students when I am making Donors Choose projects of the things they think our classroom needs and when the students finally get that new book in their hands, the look on their face makes my day!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Drake

  This classroom project was brought to life by SONIC Drive-In.