Like birds of a feather, D75 teachers flock together!

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Thank you so much for your generous donations. Because of you my students were able to experience the joy of reading a good book first hand. My students begged to pick up their books each and every day. The books brought suspense and a renewed interest to English class and for that I am forever thankful.

We are so lucky to have you as a donor. Thank you for investing in our students and their futures. Your generous gift has gone to good use and will be used in years to come with new students each year.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Bukowski

Whenever a large box arrives, my students are bound to get excited! This was certainly true for my students when the couch arrived at my school. Based upon our conversations, they knew exactly what it was and couldn't wait to help me set it up! You all brought tremendous joy to my students' faces.

As I described in my project details, my students are classified as having disabilities, and because of that, many have difficulty managing their emotions in stressful situations, usually caused by the Common Core and standardized tests that they are faced with. They require incentives and motivation in order to access their curriculum and utilize appropriate social and emotional behavior. Every week, we open our game room to students who have reached level four on our positive behavior intervention supports system. Now that they have a couch to sit on, we've seen the number of students able to attend the room go up tremendously as they have now been provided with comfortable seating! We truly cannot thank you enough for your support and hope you'll continue to support our endeavors in the future. Thank you!”

With gratitude,

Teacher

Thank you so much for your generous support and help toward advancing my students' communication skills. Our new printer, ink, and paper has allowed access to the creation of endless visual supports, activities, and other materials for the use in therapy, in the classrooms, and even to send home for our families. My students love using their new visuals and even enjoy participating in the creation/printing. Furthermore, the families and teachers that I work with are so appreciative of the materials that we have access to through the new printer.

With the materials, I've been able to collaborate with classroom teachers and provider push-in therapy sessions where each student has access to the visual supports they individually need to access language. For example, in one room, some of my students have all of the specific line drawn symbols for their "Picture Exchange Communication" books and others have general visual activity boards with both "core" and "fringe" language for our chosen activity of the day. We can't wait to continue and expand these activities with our new materials throughout the school year!

Across the rest of the school year (and years beyond), I plan to continue to develop student specific materials, as well as advance the general visuals and activities for a variety of lessons/activities. My students and I cannot thank you enough for the endless support provided by the printer, which will allow us to adapt all activities and provide a voice for my non-verbal kiddos for years to come.

Thank you so much! We are so grateful!”

With gratitude,

Ms. Dana

Thank you so much for donating. I can't believe another year is right around the corner. The ink will help greatly with all the new students work and supplies. It's great way to start the new year with some new materials.

Thank you so much for thinking of us because buying ink can be extremely expensive when there are so many other items to buy.

Each year I get six new students with six new personalities and then supply lists are endless. Now with your help there is one less item I need to purchase.

Thank you so much.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Sessa

My students, staff, and I cannot thank you sufficiently for your generosity. We have not only enjoyed using the art supplies you donated, but we have also learned a great deal in many areas of our curriculum because of these art-related experiences. As an example, none of my middle school students could identify the earth when I first showed a picture of it on our classroom SmartBoard at the beginning of the school year. By the end of the school year, each student not only recognized the earth, but could identify each of the continents and oceans. They were able to do this because each student created his or her own globe out of paper mache, balloons, and paint. Having this messy and fun experience while engaged in the creation of their own globe helped each learner better understand the map. In addition to identifying each continent and ocean because of the project, several of my students were able to extend their knowledge to answer higher-order questions such as " Is this part of the earth an ocean or land? How do you know?" They were so proud of their new knowledge and their globes and I was proud of them.

We have also used the materials to explore science-related topics. Thus far, we have studied changing states of matter by creating slime from the glue and liquid water color you supplied, ice painting with liquid watercolors to explore the same topic, and cloud types by painting a large cloud mural.

My students have also used the patterned scissors, oil pastels, pens, and other art supplies to make their journals not merely places for writing but works of art. These supplies motivate my students and help make learning accessible and fun for them. They learn and experience new mediums and art supplies in the process and we have supported this learning about art not only with the beautiful supplies you have donated, but by taking them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

This combination of community experiences along with curriculum-related hands-on art activities has excited them and motivated them in ways beyond what I could have even expected when I first submitted this project. It has been a pleasure and joy to experience this with them.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Johnson

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your kindness and support. Your donations made possible for us to receive very much needed materials for our classroom. I can not begin to tell you how excited the children were when they first saw all the wonderful resources we obtained through your donations.

The materials we received are now being used to supplement many of our lessons, however the children enjoy using them during our skill based center and play based center. The children also enjoy story time with the big books, and writing and drawing with the supplies we now have.

With the materials we received the children have mastered many skills such as sorting rings, putting numbers 1-10 in order and putting puzzles together. The also enjoy building many different things with the building sets as well as pretend play with the objects they build.

Once again thank you for your kindness and generosity, and for your continued support to our children.”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Castro

For those who don't know, this project was a part of a pilot from donorschoose that allowed the students to create this initiative! Having the opportunity to create a student-powered project was an incredible experience for my students. They learned crucial self-help, self-advocacy, research, and writing skills throughout the process. My students participated in helping me to raise money by posting on social media. They helped to fundraise around the building through bake sales. All around, including my students in this process totally changed the game of donorschoose for me. In case you weren't aware, we created this project to help start a health and fitness club! Although we received everything in May, we wanted to get started right away!

When we were funded, my students cheered with excitement! I truly believe that they were more excited about the reading materials than the workout equipment and the Wii! We lobbied around the school for members who would want to participate in our fitness club. Currently, we have a set of 20 students who volunteered. They have participated in a variety of activities to kick it off.

First, for our science fair project, we made hypotheses to determine whether or not we think we make healthy choices, and graphed them in the class to get a visual understanding of how the class felt. Then, using the books, we did research and created a game on the interactive website, Kahoot, to test whether or not we made healthy choices throughout the day. Here's the link for that game (https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/3c3f0438-fdfb-445b-9153-0e055183ff04). Then, we evaluated our scores to determine if our predictions were correct. The club then went to the science fair to have other students in our school test the same hypotheses and they were surprised to see that they weren't healthy enough! Now that we are aware, we want to make changes.

We issued permission slips to parents to participate in the healthy living club for activities involving weight management and tracking, and body fat analysis, but haven't been able to get those all in, so we'll start that in the summer. In the meantime, we're using our pedometers, and diet minder journal to keep track of our lifestyle choices throughout each day. Just being aware of what we're doing is helping some of us make changes. We are just in the early stages and can't wait to see how dramatically this changes our lives.

Thank you graciously for your continued support to our classroom! We are always looking to improve and are grateful for your help to get there!”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Asaro

This project has brightened our days in Room 206 tremendously. We were delighted to get the printer, clay and other supplies to help foster different learning styles and to differentiate in our classroom. The day that the bulk of the packages came, one of my students asked if Santa Claus came as we opened our presents. Myself and my staff were so excited and the excitement was certainly contagious. Since we received the gifts made available to us by you, wonderful donors, and Donor's Choose folks, we have been able to show gains this school year!”

With gratitude,

Teacher

I want to express my sincere thanks for all the kind and thoughtful donations. Since receiving the resources, our classroom has been filled with happy students who love all the engaging learning tools. It is such a joy to see my students interacting with each other and learning through hands-on games and activities.

With the addition of the storage unit and bookcase, our classroom has become very neat and organized. The students know how to clean up after library center and choice time by putting everything away in the correct bin or shelf.

The math games and literacy stations are greatly supplementing our math and reading program. My students are learning their sight words, practicing beginning and ending sounds, improving their phonemic awareness and reading comprehension. The students use the math games all the time. They are a lot of fun and very interactive.

My classroom is very organized thanks to the storage unit and bookcase. The students know how to clean up after library center and choice time by putting everything away in the correct bin or shelf.

The students absolutely love the reading pillow and the bean bag chair. They sit and relax on them daily while reading books.

Thank you again so much for your generosity! We are truly grateful and will continue to use the resources all the time. My students are learning so much because of you!”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Sullivan-Alfano

In a high poverty neighborhood, it's not always easy to receive the supplies we need for a successful school year. As a class, we were in dire need of some good quality headphones and microphones. Our class had previously been sharing, repairing and struggling to find ways to access their reading software. It was frustrating to say the least. When my students opened the boxes to see their new headphones, they were ecstatic! They were so thrilled to have reliable tools and excited to dive into the curriculum. My students use these headphones and microphones everyday to access Learninga-z.com content in an individualized and interactive way. It allows them to have immediate feedback when pronouncing words throughout read-alongs and they are truly taking their skills to the next level. My students use the splitters for small group work, where they can all access the same information at the same time, in a clear and direct system. Our reading scores are truly improving this year and we are so thrilled to see that. We want to thank you, graciously, because you are making such a difference in the lives of these students!”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Asaro