This week, we’re hoping to help finish up our Alabama high school biology project, and we’re adding a Dallas kindergarten teacher who needs a variety of building materials suitable for her students. 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, math, and literacy projects for red-state public schools in low-income neighborhoods. As always, our conduit is DonorsChoose, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation that facilitates tax-deductible donations to specific, vetted projects in public schools.
For February, DonorsChoose has created a special project designation to help people who wish to direct their donations in observance of Black History Month. You’ll see the text below in a box near the top of projects with this designation, including both our projects today. There is a search available if you’d like to locate more such projects.
CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY MONTH
This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
This has been our longer-term project for a few weeks, but I’m happy to say it’s gained so much ground that it’s moved up here today! Ms. Delchamps teaches high school biology in Mobile, Alabama, and she wants her students to be able to do a fascinating project to understand what pigments plants use to go about their business of photosynthesis. They’ll need, among other things, this snazzy little spectrophotometer.
PROJECT #1
Resources: Help me give my students a fun, educational lab experience where we can actually see the wavelengths of light absorbed and reflected by plants.
Economic need: An Equity Focus School; more than half of students from low‑income households. A “Celebrating Black History Month” project.
Location: Murphy High School, Mobile, Alabama
Total: $1,105.96
Still Needed: $155.44 Completed, thank you! Please consider project #2 below.
Project description by Ms. Delchamps: This project focuses on preparing plant extract to see and measure the wavelengths of light absorbed by the plant pigments. They also understand why we see pigments in certain colors. The first step in photosynthesis is absorbance of light for the energy source, and this experiment lets students see first hand how the light-dependent reaction works. They are then able to demonstrate by graphing the different wavelengths of light absorbed and reflected. Students love to see how science actually works in the world around them. This lab is one of my favorites!
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Professor Dave explains the different plant pigments involved in photosynthesis.
The California Academy of Sciences takes us on a trip inside a leaf, to see what happens there. If you turn on closed-captioning, there are subtitles that explain the various things encountered, or you can leave the captions off and just enjoy a mildly psychedelic voyage.
Our new project this week is for a Dallas kindergarten teacher. Mrs. Scales needs lots of STEM building materials so her students can design and build whatever they imagine! Like our other project, this is also a “Celebrating Black History Month” project.
PROJECT #2
Resources: Help me give my students building blocks and resources to help my students create in the learning station.
Economic need: An Equity Focus School; nearly all students from low‑income households. A “Celebrating Black History Month” project.
Location: George W Truett Elementary School, Dallas, Texas
Total: $491.27
Still Needed: $491.27 $431.27
Project description by Mrs. Scales: Students LOVE STEM! I am a kindergarten teacher hoping to add a STEM center to our station rotation. I would also love to have STEM Fridays where all students are able to collaborate together!
STEM can be a great tool for building student thinking and imagination stimulation!
I would love to have many different building blocks, magnetic blocks, bristle blocks, legos, and manipulative options for students to choose from and switch out weekly to keep things new and fun for them!
These STEM building manipulatives can also be used in many different subject areas. So, students will always have a chance to have some hands-on learning!
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Here are a couple of the items in the request. These “bristle-lock tiles” by PicassoTile are intended for children still developing fine motor skills — it’s a cinch to stick them together!
KASHIAOTE Gears building sets make it easy for kids to build projects that move and do things.
Our main project from last week was completed, with a big assist from our readers, ...
Project #1, Music + Reading= Fun!: Ms. Jones is an elementary school music teacher in Atlanta. She uses music tied to books when she can, to encourage kids to read. She wants each student to get their own copy of a lovely little Sendak picture book whose song she’ll teach.
She writes: Words cannot express how much I appreciate your donations! I am beaming from ear to ear right now and I’m SO excited to get these books for my babies!!
You have given me an opportunity to show how much fun music and reading can be together! I will continue to work with my scholars to improve their reading skills, while having fun in the process.
Thanks again so much for your help! You have absolutely made my day!!
DonorsChoose has developed the designation Equity Focus Schools to describe some schools that submit projects. They meet two criteria: at least 50% of students are Black, Latinx, Native American, Pacific Islander, or multiracial, and at least 50% of students qualify for free or reduced price lunch, the standard measure for school economic need. You can read more at the link about their efforts to address the longstanding inequity in education. |
Founded in 2009, The Inoculation Project combats the anti-science, anti-education push in conservative America by funding science, math, and literacy projects in red-state public school classrooms and libraries. Our conduit is DonorsChoose, 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 projects 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 1015! The success-list diary also contains links and additional information about DonorsChoose.