This week, we’re helping a Houston early-elementary teacher get some stories in Spanish to keep her readers engaged, and a Cleveland middle school teacher give her class some exciting science experiments. 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.
We’ve made some good progress on this one, so here it is at the top!
Mrs. Garcia needs some books in Spanish, to help her early-grade English learners stay engaged with reading in both languages.
PROJECT #1
Resources: Help me give my students books in Spanish to enhance their joy for reading.
Economic need: An Equity Focus School; nearly all students from low‑income households.
Location: Purple Sage Elementary School, Houston, Texas
Total: $267.96
Still Needed: Completed, thank you! Please consider project #2!
Teacher’s Comments from Mrs. Garcia:
My Project: Students in my classroom like to read about everything. They get excited to sit on a bean bag and to turn the pages of a good book. I would like to have a variety of stories that will continue to hold their interests and keep them reading in my classroom. I have chosen books that are full of many stories that they will enjoy to read in their native language.
Students must keep up the momentum of reading in the classroom for it to become a life long habit.
I have been able to spark an interest in reading with the books I have in my classroom library; however, my students are bilingual so they need a variety of books to meet the needs of a dual language environment.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
From the requested book, 365 cuentos y rimas para la hora de dormir, storyteller Frida Gogar shares the story Pink is for Princesses, about a princess who HATES pink! (If you turn on the auto-generated English subtitles, you will laugh because they’re truly awful, but they did manage to be just coherent enough to inform a non-speaker like me what the story is about, and how Ms. Gogar uses it as a lesson.)
Mrs. Lattner needs an assortment of lab kits to allow her Cleveland middle school students to explore the sciences. She has some interesting topics lined up!
PROJECT #2
Resources: Help me give my students some hands on kits to increase our scientific knowledge through inquiry and investigations.
Economic need: An Equity Focus School; nearly all students from low‑income households.
Location: Halle School, Cleveland, Ohio
Total: $328.52
Still Needed: $246.02 $126.02
Teacher’s Comments from Mrs. Lattner:
My Project: Our students love to be engaged in learning. The best way to be engaged and having fun while learning is through hands-on inquiry and practice.
I am asking for hand-on lab kits for chemistry, electromagnetism, and genetics.
These kits will bring the hard to understand abstract concepts to life through doing. The Periodic Table Kit will allow students to physically place the "elements" where they belong and discover why. The Changing Ecosystem Kit will help students to understand the importance of keeping our environments clean. The Genetic Globin Game will help the students visually see the impact of how genes can mutate over generations, bring the Punnett Square lessons to life. The Litmus Paper will be used to test items to learn about acids and bases. And the Intro to Electromagnetism will allow students to delve deeper into electromagnetics, more than just a battery, nail, and copper wire.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Our big project #2, that we’d been chipping away at for weeks, was finally completed, with the bulk of its funding coming from us (and, of course, the matching funds!)
Project #2, Doodling Into Existence: Mr. Boston teaches high school in Oklahoma, and wanted these wonderful little 3D “pens”, handheld devices allowing students to create 3D models freehand, by drawing them in the air.
As I write this, he has not seen yet that the project is complete. We’ll bring you his note when it is posted!
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 974! The success-list diary also contains links and additional information about DonorsChoose.