Sgt. Stache

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We had enough ink cartridges to last us through the school year. My students love to use the computers and enjoyed writing several books. In the pictures I have uploaded, you will see students working on their rough drafts and then reading their final books to the class.

Your donation allowed me to give students varied opportunities in the classroom to learn, explore, and to practice their reading and writing. You helped to make this school year an enjoyable and successful one. I can't thank you enough.”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Forrester

Thank you all so much for making a difference for children who really needed your help. The rhyming books and activities have made a really impact on our students' reading progress. Rhyming is a fundamental stepping stone in learning to read. Thanks to the activities and books you donated our students now have access to the rhyming skills that they wouldn't otherwise have access to. Our school district is facing a budget shortfall and our school doesn't have the resources to buy extra resources for our students. Without your generosity our students' would struggle with the key skill of rhyming that they need. The activities and books will give our students hands on practice to master the skill of rhyming and become better, more confident readers. Thank you for helping our little readers rhyme and grow!”

With gratitude,

Teacher

Thank you so much for your generous support of our art program! Students are enjoying the acting aspects of the animation unit, as they act out and identify their emotions; they are sharpening their drawing skills, and are interested in how cartoons work. The drawing kit is helping to teach effectively about value and line quality, and students especially like working with darker leads which give a softer effect. We are learning facial proportions and learning to recognize and replicate expressions. The light boxes are such a great modification for our students, as they help to reduce frustration when used in concert with printouts and templates.

This has been a great "hook" to make a fundamentals of drawing unit interesting and fresh for me and the students. I am working in concert with a local animator and learning many new skills which I am sharing with my students and will help me to continue to develop innovative models in the future. We will definitely be exploring these techniques in future years to work on storytelling using 21st century technology, and use the Internet and other forums to share the students' work. Other city school art teachers are interested in the methodology we're developing with your support and I plan on sharing with the art education community.

I cannot thank you enough for your support of this pilot animation program. We would not have been able to do it without you!”

With gratitude,

Ms. Gambino

Thank you so very much for your generous donations to our classroom. My students and I have enjoyed receiving and reading these great new books on a daily basis!

Every day, for 10-15 minutes a day, my kids participate in self selected reading. Since we've gotten all of these awesome books, they have been so much more engaged and excited to read! They even ask if they can read all period long! Prior to getting these books, SSR time was sometimes met with sighs and groans because there simply weren't enough "good books" to go around. Thanks to your generosity and selflessness, every student in all of my classes not only has one good book to read every day, but even has a list of good books that they want to read in the future.

Thanks for caring and for making a difference.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Savage

Thank you so much for donating money for the math manipulatives for my students to enjoy. These materials really grabbed the interest of my middle school students and they were excited each time we used the resources and started making real connections to our content. It was so nice to hear them chorus "ohhhh, that's why!" each time a new understanding was made.

The movement in mathematics is for conceptual understanding, and so often students miss out on the opportunities to really attain true understanding because schools cannot afford the necessary materials. Being able to get manipulatives into my students' hands has brought our classroom alive. Kids are making connections; they are "seeing" the concepts and actually beginning to process the information rather than just memorizing definitions and steps.

The students are still waiting to use some more of the materials as we dive heavily in Algebra to prepare them for high school assessments. They ask me daily "when are we going to use those?" and it's refreshing to see them engaged and interested in what we are learning!

Your gift is immensely appreciated, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share these materials with my students.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Bovill

Since receiving the LCD projector for my classroom, I have brought 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students on a visual trip to six of the seven continents. The 8th grade students have seen and learned about masks from the past and present created by different cultures all around the world. They are currently creating their own masks. The students are each making two masks. Each mask will show a different emotion. The 6th and 7th grade students have taken a journey through time, experiencing early to contemporary abstract art and portraiture from around the world. The art spans all the way from Native American art to Dutch, to contemporary art from Taiwan. Every project from now on will be able to be explored more deeply. The social, cultural, and aesthetic qualities will be investigated. Student work is already showing greater depth and meaning after viewing the way other people have created similar pieces of art. This is a very exciting time in my classroom. The students look forward to the topic of art history and have wonderful insights into the art of the past.

Thank you so much for your donation to help fund this project. You have truly helped a dream come alive. The students are excited every time they see the projector set up because they know that they will get to see something and experience artwork that they have never seen before. Visual learning is important in every subject. Art is certainly no exception. The visual process is critical to art and the information that I can present now leads to more enriching discussions as well as student artwork. I really can't thank all of you enough for helping to fund this project.

Thank you again for your help and donations in funding this project. You have truly made a big difference in the education of many students for years to come.

”

With gratitude,

Teacher

Let me start by expressing my profound appreciation for your generosity. I find it both encouraging and inspiring that you share a vision for my students' success. I believe that your actions communicate a very strong message to my students that goes beyond your charity. The message is that there is an entire community of people who recognize the importance of strengthening one's literacy through regular reading.

All of my students have taken assessments that show them their reading level. Each student is aware of the grade level that they are reading on and has set a goal for where they would like to be by the end of the year. On average, my tenth graders are reading on about a sixth or seventh grade level. Naturally, learning this is very frustrating for students. For many of them, their initial reaction is to give up or to lower their expectations. However, through strategic conferencing and team building, I am able to help invest my students into creating ambitious and feasible goals for growth. In the conferences, we identify the importance of reading books that are just above their reading level. Habitual reading is not a part of many of my students' lives, so, as you can imagine, reading on a regular basis becomes an overwhelming and often a scary experience. The amazing variety of subjects and difficulty levels in the books you have provided for my students is exactly what they need to get invested and feel successful in their goals.

As I mentioned in my project proposal, my school is amongst the last of a dying bread of schools that attempts to bring a substantive education to all students in its community without any entrance requirements. We welcome all students. The result is that many students who come to our school have not had great deals of success in middle school or simply were not provided with the quality of education that they deserve. As a staff, we looked at all of the obstacles standing in the way of our students and agreed that literacy needed to be our number one focus. Through literacy we can help students catch up to where they need to be on graduation day. Your contribution puts my class at the forefront of this initiative. Indeed, the success of the literacy push in my class will, in many ways, help us determine how the movement will look in the rest of the school. I cannot wait to see how the focus on literacy benefits my students and eventually my school as a whole. Thank you so much for being a part of this great enterprise. ”

With gratitude,

Mr. Swanson