We’ve already begun working on this week’s projects to provide calculators for students at a North Carolina high school and engineering kits for PreK-2 English Language Learners at a school in one of Texas’ border cities. We hope that readers who support quality public school education will help by sharing or supporting our featured projects.
The Inoculation Project is an ongoing, volunteer effort to crowdfund science and math projects for red-state public schools in low-income neighborhoods. As always, our conduit is DonorsChoose.org, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation that facilitates tax-deductible donations to specific, vetted projects in public schools.
dolphine, one of our community members, brought this worthwhile project to our attention, and I hope we can push it across the finish line this week:
PROJECT #1
Resources: Help me give my students the new TI-84 Plus calculators! They work hard and deserve the best tools to help them be successful.
Economic need: Nearly all students from low‑income households
Location: North Wilkes High School, Hays, North Carolina
Total: $982.93 (1.5x match offer)
Still Needed: $272.21 Completed, thank you! Please consider projects below.
Teacher’s Comments from Mrs. Shirk:
My Students: We are a low income school in the northwest corner of North Carolina. My classes are composed of 9th-12th graders that are eager to learn the math required to get them ready for the real world and college.
We are a school where 60% of our students receive free lunch and about 20% receive reduced price lunch.
Our textbooks are outdated; our calculators are outdated and are all but dead. Most of our students come from low income families without the means to buy the required technology.
My Project: UPGRADE! Please help me get a small class set of TI-84 Plus calculators to help them work through various types of math problems. On our current roster, we have students ranging from 9th to 12th grade, in a variety of math classes. I would love to have a very versatile calculator which would allow all of the students to appropriately access assistance.
These new calculators will help foster a love of math!
Our current calculators have been around for a while and have been painted, buttons have worn off, and screens are scratched or cracked. My kiddos and I would love a new set to help foster a love of math and build the confidence required to be successful in math.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Our second project will help a never-before-funded PreK-2 class of English Language Learners (ELLs) in one of Texas’ border cities:
PROJECT #2
Resources: Help me give my students STEAM lab kits to explore engineering and the creative process through these products!
Economic need: Nearly all students from low‑income households
Location: Raquel Pena Elementary School, Brownsville, Texas
Total: $185.66
Still Needed: $85.66 Completed, thank you! Please consider projects below.
Teacher’s Comments from Ms. Castaneda:
My Students: My kids are fun, serious, interesting and challenging. Each has a unique way of learning, communicating, and excelling. They are hard working and keep up with my high expectations. We are a blended learning class for ELLs. They are always engaged and eager to learn beyond the books. They accepted the challenge and are excelling. They love working together and completing objectives.
STEAM challenges gets their attention and motivation.
Our school is a place where students can get the support, encouragement, and the inspiration to be successful! Our classroom family is faced with academic, social, and emotional challenges every day but the drive for success overcome any challenges. Our classroom is a place where technology, creativity, risk-taking and project-based learning is used to succeed.
My Project: Thames & Kosmos The Big Engineering Makerspace and SmartLab(r) Aftershock Earthquake Labtm Kit will continue to enhance our STEAM classroom that I strive to create. My classroom is a place that my students really enjoy hands-on experiences!! These kits will give my students opportunities to enhance their learning at a new level.
With Thames & Kosmos The Big Engineering Makerspace and SmartLab(r) Aftershock Earthquake Labtm Kit, my students will be able to choose how they can bring to life their creations and allow them to explore engineering independently with their own creativity.
It will also allow them more options to use in order create new products and ideas to solve real-world problems. My students already have shown an astonishing interest in engineering and this project will only help enrich their experiences.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Our long-term project will help a GEMS Club — Girls Excelling in Math and Science — at a middle school in South Carolina:
LONG-TERM PROJECT
Resources: Help me give my students everything they need to create a pollinator garden at our school. We will use our greenhouse to support and maintain pollinators by supplying food in the form of pollen and nectar.
Economic need: Nearly all students from low‑income households
Location: Colleton County Middle School, Walterboro, South Carolina
Total: $474.21
Still Needed: $474.21 $311.15
Teacher’s Comments from Mrs. Heinemann:
My Students: I teach at a middle school in a 90% poverty district with a high minority and special education population. I am the adult sponsor of the GEMS Club - Girls Excelling in Math and science. This club is made of girls in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade with a high number of our girls being recruited from the special education classes (80%).
Working with the wonderful girls in this club over the last year has demonstrated to me that it is not because they lack the ability or intelligence, just the opportunities .
A school garden provides a unique opportunity for students and teachers to engage with an outdoor space in the context of school.
My Project: Pollinator gardens are one of the most flexible, cost-effective and timeless educational tools available. These gardens provide clear, real life examples of the interdependent nature of our food ecosystem, and the valuable services that pollinators – yes, even insects – provide to human society. Approximately 75 percent of all food crops grown in the United States depend on pollinator animals such as insects, reptiles, birds and some mammals.
Our GEMS club members are excited to use our greenhouse and plant herbs, vegetables and local wildflowers.
They can see our garden come to life. Not only do they get to help our school have healthier, tastier lunches, but they will get to help our endangered pollinators as we. Pollinator gardens support and maintain pollinators by supplying food in the form of pollen and nectar that will ensure that these important animals stay in the area to keep pollinating our crops for continued fruit and vegetable production. Our local bees are endangered and we will Bee Houses to attract them as well as planting local native plants.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Edited to add a chemistry project recommended by Eastern Bluebird!
PROJECT #4
Resources: Help me give my students consumable lab supplies, so that I can provide my students safety and help prevent or eliminate hazards while using chemicals.
Economic need: Nearly all students from low‑income households
Location: Holmes County Central High School, Lexington, Mississippi
Total: $671.58
Still Needed: $520.99 $482.93
Teacher’s Comments from Dr. SITRAM:
My Students: My students are creative, inquisitive and always ready to learn something new! They absolutely love hands-on, active, engaging projects and challenges that allow them to think outside the box to find solutions! They come to school each day ready to try new things and take brave chances in order to grow both personally and academically. They ask me if we are blowing out something every other day...….that's what they see learning Chemistry as.
Hands-on activities motivates every student in my class, and they demonstrate an intense level of curiosity in science.
Each child in my classroom absolutely loves learning chemistry. I incorporate a variety of learning strategies, labs, group work, and learning options to ensure that each student's needs are met, right where they are! They are truly an incredible group, and I am so lucky and thankful to have a group of learners that are excited and ready to learn each year!
Our school is located in Rural Mississippi Delta region, surrounded by Agricultural farms and 98% of my students are on Free and reduced lunch, 95% of them come from single parent families.
My Project: Very soon I will be teaching Types of Chemical Reactions and my students will need to be in the Chemistry lab. We know chemical laboratory classes include hands-on, inquiry-based investigations. Most of the laboratory activities involve the use of chemicals or equipment that may pose a health or safety danger to students and teachers if not handled properly. To ensure a safe and healthy environment in our classrooms and laboratories, student should use lab safety equipment.
Gloves and Safety goggles are consumables and need to be replaced periodically and when needed.
Before conducting any experiment, I access the hazards related to the work, including; what are the worst possible things that could go wrong, how would we deal with them, and what are the prudent practices, protective facilities and equipment necessary to minimize the risk of exposure to the hazards. As we know the basic things needed in lab are safety goggles and gloves which could prevent most of the hazards.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Thanks to a variety of efforts, both of last week’s projects were completed! Here are the teachers’ thank you notes:
Making Mathematicians
My students and I cannot thank you enough for your generous support. Because of thoughtful and giving people like yourself, my students (many of whom are disadvantaged financially and/or otherwise), get the extra support they need and deserve in my classroom. Because of you, my students get to learn in a way that is not only fun and engaging, but most importantly- effective!
Because of you, these kids have a better chance of, in the short term, understanding fractions in a deep and conceptual way.
But more importantly,
because of you,
these kids have a better chance of cultivating a love and enthusiasm for learning, and ultimately, perhaps a more rewarding and fulfilling life than they currently know.
From my class, to you,
thank you.
With gratitude,
Mr. Trull
STEMtastic Computer Engineering Club
Thank you all so much for your help and a special thanks to the Daily KOS group for picking up my project and making sure that it got funded. The kids and I appreciate this so much.
Thanks to your donation, in a few weeks the club will be able to build this computer multiple times to practice their skills and at the end of the year one of the students will get to take it home. To many of the families in our community this would be life changing as most of them do not even have a home computer. Thank you again for helping my little club make a difference.
With gratitude,
Mr. Fenner
Founded in 2009, The Inoculation Project combats the anti-science push in conservative America by funding science and math projects in red-state classrooms and libraries. Our conduit is DonorsChoose.org, a crowdfunding charity founded in 2000 and highly rated by both Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau.
Every Sunday, we focus on helping to fund science or math projects, preferably in neighborhood public schools where the overwhelming majority of students come from low-income households. We welcome everyone who supports public school education — no money is required!
Finally, here’s our list of successfully funded projects — our series total is 725! The success-list diary also contains links and additional information about DonorsChoose.org.