Welcome to The Inoculation Project, a weekly effort to help fund science and math projects in red-state public schools categorized as high poverty. This week, we’re hoping to complete last week’s long-term project as well as to begin chipping away at a couple of new projects with assistance from matching offers.
As always, our conduit is DonorsChoose.org, an organization founded in 2000 and highly rated by both Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau. If you’re short on cash, don’t worry — we’re glad to see you anyway! And your tips, recs, shares, and so on are a good free way to help, by helping us get on the rec list and catch more eyes.
Because last week’s long-term project is close to completion with the support of the teacher’s parents, I’m moving it up in hopes that it will be completed this week. I’ve also added some new projects below.
MAIN PROJECT
Resources: My students need dry-erase double-sided whiteboards (one side plane white, the other the X-Y coordinate grid) to practice graphing in math class and they need measuring tape to help with measuring non-linear items.
School Poverty Level: High
Location: Ridgevue High School, Nampa, Idaho
Total: $378.54
Still Needed: $119.72 Completed! All now completed. See you Sunday!
Expires: July 15, 2017
Teacher’s Comments from Ms. Alley:
My Students: I am a high school math teacher who wants to make Math come alive through hands-on and visual activities. My goal is to have all of my students make sense of math.
My school’s motto is “Above the Best” and we are committed to creating positive learning experiences in order for our students to be “Above the Best.”
My students are 9 - 12th graders from a Title One school. They come from challenging backgrounds and most are fighting uphill battles. As a school, we are committed to students’ success in school and in the future.
My Project: An expert in any field becomes an expert through practice. My students would greatly benefit from having their own individual double-sided dry-erase board to practice and sharpen their math skills. One side of the board is plain white for solving equations or making annotations to build a graph. The second side is emblazoned with the X-Y Coordinate Grid so students can graph the many equations encountered in all Math classes.
Students can practice graphing mathematical equations on the dry-erase boards.
These boards are much easier to see than in a notebook and therefore, I, as the teacher, am more able to correct misconceptions and steer students to a better understanding of the Mathematical material.
The second items requested are measuring tapes. My students explore in my Math classroom. The measuring tapes would allow students a more precise way to measure non-linear items.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
If you are unfamiliar with the original song and curious: NSFW.
Here are two new projects with matching offers:
NEW PROJECT
Resources: My students need gardening supplies in order to promote hands-on, applied, inquiry based scientific learning
School Poverty Level: Highest
Location: West Bolivar High School, Rosedale, Mississippi
Total: $532.62 (matching offer!)
Still Needed: $432.62 COMPLETED! Thank you.
Expires: July 8, 2017
Teacher’s Comments from Mr. Rapisarda:
My Students: As a teacher in a low-income/high-poverty school district, my students have been largely deprived of long-term, scientific inquiry projects. Despite these challenges, my students continue to be extremely curious about the natural and physical world around them, and are constantly asking questions.
In order to create well-rounded young adults, the science classroom must be a place of inquiry and discovery.
I teach my students that, "science is everywhere", a mantra that students have embraced wholeheartedly. My students are hungry for information, and are the most engaged when they are performing hands-on inquiry activities. I want to provide my students with a project that allows them to not only learn more about the natural world, but also give them a means to change the community that they live in.
The power of hands-on learning cannot be underestimated. A scientific garden opens up a world of opportunities for students, reaching far beyond the classroom. In short, this project will introduce students to current, tangible world issues in an engaging and stimulating way.
My Project: If funded, students will use these garden supplies to create a scientific plot in the community garden in our town. They will explore the basics of scientific inquiry while learning more about gardening, health, and nutrition. Students would use the grow lamp apparatus as they explore plant cultivation. A grow lamp is required to manipulate the amount of sunlight that will reach different plant specimens, to help students understand photosynthesis, and to also recognize that some plants respond differently to light than others. The project requires potting soil to plant specimens in the test plots located at the community garden. The comprehensive seed set well help students further their understanding of plant and animal diversity. Each plant provides a unique micro-ecosystem that can be explored, and attracts different pollinators. Students will be able to explore the differences in plant structures of monocots and dicots, and be able to explore the nutritional needs of each category of plants.
By choosing food crops, students will also explore the cultural and social importance of agriculture.
By providing a means to grow food, students have the opportunity to become empowered about where their food comes from, and can explore issues as varied as food deserts, GMO’s, health/nutrition, and environmental sustainability.
This project will take place after school through the Rosedale Freedom Project, a community organization committed to preparing middle and high school students for college and beyond. By implementing this project after school hours, we will increase the time spent critically thinking, learning, and analyzing scientific concepts covered in class, raising test scores in both science and math. More importantly, the additional time will allow students to further explore the connection between science and society, that only a hands-on, after school project can provide.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
NEW PROJECT
Resources: My students need a synthesizer to discover how sound is produced on an electronic instrument.
School Poverty Level: Highest
Location: Cool Valley Elementary School, St Louis, Missouri
Total: $475.91 (matching offer!)
Still Needed: $416.55 Completed! Thank you.
Expires: July 21, 2017
Teacher’s Comments from Ms. Kowalczyk:
My Students: Sing, Say, Dance, and Play! Every day an exciting adventure awaits my students when they enter my music classroom, a.k.a. Ms. K.'s House of Music. We sing, say, dance, and play to experience music at its fullest!
I teach music to K-6th grade students in a low-income public school in Ferguson, Missouri.
Most are at poverty level, and many also experience violence in their neighborhoods on a daily basis. Sometimes, music is the only solace to their day.
In spite of their tumultuous lives outside of school, my students are eager to express themselves through music. Every day they enter the music room with excitement and an eagerness to learn.
My Project: I am starting a "Science and Music" club after-school beginning in April. Students from grades 3-5 will participate. My musical scientists already have discovered how sound is produced during music class. In our after-school club we will explore how sound is produced on a synthesizer. Our experiments will correlate with the Missouri Science Standard PS4, "Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer," as well as the Missouri Grade Level Expectations in Music, "Interdisciplinary Connections."
We will begin using the requested synthesizer, along with an oscilloscope app (Audacity), to discover how frequencies (how many times the wave vibrates in one second) and amplitude (volume) play important roles in sound production.
We will explore how one instrument can sound different from another when playing the exact same musical note. Sine, square, saw tooth, and triangular waves will be explored. Next, we will develop our own models of waves to describe patterns in terms of amplitude or wavelength using wire or string to illustrate wavelength and amplitude of waves. At this stage we will also discuss and compare cross disciplinary ways of how the science of sound relates to electronic music. Finally, they will combine the waves to makes complex sounds, and my students will not only discover how traditional instruments are replicated on the synthesizer, but they will also create their very own sounds! We will record our music and display it with our sound wave models at our Fine Arts Night in May.
Through experimentation with the MicroBrute Synthesizer, my students will discover that synthesizers can basically reproduce the sound of any instrument. They will learn how that can happen through experimenting with the many different oscillators and discover how each can produce a different wave, or shape. Learning science through music rocks!
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Thank you note for last week’s completed project from an elementary school teacher in North Carolina:
I logged in to check on things and imagine my amazement that this was funded! I had not had access to the internet for several days and was unaware of the AMAZING donations that had poured in. A simple thank you just does not seem like enough but is more than just words. My kids (my students) just simply deserve so much more than our budget will allow. Budget cuts have been hardest on the poorest schools and my kids just need more to be able to compete with others for future success. Starting so far behind when they begin school and constantly having to work harder to get as much as they can is draining without the right supplies. In years past, we have had to teach less and less science and social studies because we lacked the expensive material and would run out of time each day trying to teach math and reading standards so they could keep up. Thank you for agreeing that science is vital to their learning, vital to their 21st century standings in terms of sustainability and being seen as ready for careers that may not even exist yet. Thank you for seeing in them the possibility for greatness even when they start out with so little. Simply, thank you!
With gratitude,
Mrs. Snider
Founded in 2009, The Inoculation Project is an effort to combat the anti-science push in conservative America by providing direct funding to science and math projects in traditionally red-state classrooms and libraries. Our conduit is DonorsChoose.org, an organization founded in 2000 and highly rated by both Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau. DonorsChoose allows you to contribute to specific, vetted projects in public schools, resulting in tremendous and immediate impacts from small-dollar donations. Here’s an introductory video about DonorsChoose featuring Michelle Obama and Stephen Colbert.
Each Sunday morning, we focus on helping to fund one or two science and math projects in traditionally red-state schools, preferably in highest-poverty districts. We welcome everyone who shares our interest — no money is required! Your tip, rec, republish, comment, or share helps bring us more eyes, and besides, we like the company of others who love kids and education. Feel free to post a link or video, or just tell us how your weather is!
Finally, here’s our list of successfully funded projects — our series total is 560! The success-list diary now also contains links and additional information about DonorsChoose, formerly found in this space.