CURMUDGUCATION: Donors Chose Monday: Books and Understanding

CURMUDGUCATION: Donors Chose Monday: Books and Understanding

Donors Chose Monday: Books and Understanding

 Donors Choose lets you set up filters, so that you can focus on what you choose. The most obvious is a geographic one that allows you to find classrooms in your area looking for help. But you can also set for the types of classrooms and the types of resources, as well as setting (as I usually do) for rural schools.

So one of the classrooms chosen for this week is Ms. McCord's at Allegheny-Clarion Valley Elementary School in Foxburg PA (a cool little town to visit if you're ever in the neighborhood). She's teaching third graders, and she'd like to expand the library for both reading and developing some human-being skills

With your support, I can help my students build character and spread kindness that will reach beyond the walls of my classroom. With purposeful teaching of social-emotional lessons with associated literacy, I am hoping that my students will grow both academically and emotionally.

Mrs. Fanning in Cordova, South Carolina, is looking for similar help. She's another teacher of rural poor students who is looking for some social and emotional learning to go with the literacy

There are many wonderful books available today that can help our students understand and state their feelings and I want them to be able to relate to characters in books that might be feeling like they are.

These books will be read aloud to students who are face to face for learning as well as students who remain virtual. While reading these books, we will be able to discuss our feelings as well as learn ways to be kind to others.

As always, I invite you to contribute to these classrooms, or search for others on Donors Choose, or donate to a local classroom. Stimulus money may trickle down to classrooms, but it's not going to get there this week. If you can share, that's a great thing.

CURMUDGUCATION: Donors Chose Monday: Books and Understanding

CURMUDGUCATION: Donors Choose Mondays At The Institute

CURMUDGUCATION: Donors Choose Mondays At The Institute

Donors Choose Mondays At The Institute

It sucks that Donors Choose exists. For those unfamiliar, it's basically a Go Fund Me for classrooms instead of medical problems.

Like all such charities, it occasionally pops up in the news because some celebrity and/or business decides to sponsor a bunch of projects (like that time with Katy Perry and Staples) and we get a bunch of warm fuzzy stories and I just hate that stuff, because we shouldn't be celebrating the fact that schools are so underfunded that teachers have to depend on charity to help get the job done. 

But here's the thing. We are where we are. I think the custom of tipping food servers is stupid and terrible and should be done away with yesterday. But if I refuse to tip my server because I disagree with the system, I'm just being a jerk. I don't like enabling a system that's failing classroom teachers, but we are where we are, and especially now that I'm comfortably retired, I'm okay involving the institute in small time philanthropy. Donors Choose makes it easy for someone like me who is out in rural small town America to help. And what we've been through in the last month or four years or so has sort of reminded me that it's important to take active steps to make the world marginally better.

And yes, some of what turns up on Donors Choose makes me scratch my head and ask, "Really??" But then, I can still choose.

So here's what I'm going to do. Mondays, I'll be looking at Donors Choose to find a cause that speaks to me, and I will share a link here. I invite you to join me in helping somebody's modest classroom CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Donors Choose Mondays At The Institute