The Inoculation Project, founded in 2009 by hyperbolic pants explosion, is a group of Kossacks who gather weekly to combat the anti-science push in conservative America by providing direct funding to science and math projects in red state classrooms. Our conduit is DonorsChoose.org, an organization founded in 2000 and rated highly by both Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau. Here’s an introductory video about DonorsChoose featuring Michelle Obama and Stephen Colbert. DonorsChoose.org allows you to make direct contributions to specific, vetted projects in public school classrooms, resulting in tremendous and immediate impacts from small dollar donations. Each week, we focus on funding a single small-dollar project at a time, in a traditionally red state classroom and preferably in a high-poverty district. We also carry along a more financially ambitious project as a long-term goal.
THIS WEEK’S MAIN PROJECT
Resources: Supplies such as a metal door, PVC pipe, chicken wire, and feeders to build our very own chicken coop at school.
School Poverty Level: Highest
Location: Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, Austin, Texas
Total: $1231.15
Still Needed: $115.15 Completed!
Expires: Aug 13, 2016
Teacher’s Comments from Ms. Read:
About My Students: Ali, Finn, Amanda, and Amy are very excited about bringing chickens to the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders. After studying "sustainability," they created their campaign to offer students the opportunity to care for chickens, take home eggs, and control fire ants in our school gardens.
Amy, Amanda, Finn, and Ali were inspired by other schools in our community that have chickens on their campuses. We garden a great deal at our school, and chickens seem like a natural fit. In the course of studying the concept of "sustainability," they thought having an Egg Club at our school would be a great way to raise chickens in a kind and humane way, while creating a sustainable food source on our campus. Service learning is a central theme of our school, and opportunities on campus that allow students to serve, lead, and learn are highly encouraged. This team pitched their idea to our administration who were convinced that this would, indeed, be good for our school. Students will build and maintain a permanent coop out of wood, a mobile coop out of PVC, and a portable pen on wheels. These students have generated so much excitement about bringing chickens to our campus, our library even ordered several chicken-themed books for our school library. What leaders!
Chickens for Young Women Leaders will offer students many opportunities to learn in the classroom and beyond. Students will collaborate in their Project Lead the Way class to research, design, and build a permanent chicken coop, a portable coop, and a mobile pen using a variety of materials and tools. Students' critical thinking skills will no doubt be honed as they face the challenges ahead of them in this project. Not only will their engineering skills be needed, they will be charged to organize themselves and others to cooperatively maintain care of the chickens, their supplies, and their facilities. Amanda, Finn, Ali and Amy have envisioned a sustainable, educational way to cultivate empathy in students, as well!
In Their Own Words: Our idea is, "What are the benefits of raising farm animals on our school campus?" Our idea is important to us because it is a student driven project. We can help students become more responsible and compassionate about animals. We can also help students get more outside time. Students can also learn about managing a budget. This project is important to us because it can help our school become more green and sustainable.
We will lead the chicken committee in the long run. We will initiate the designing of the chicken coop, learning about big machinery by other students that have that experience. People could also create groups that will brainstorm ideas to improve our community or school with the chickens. There could be leaders during the summer that will help the chickens. We will continue to use organic methods to control pests and raise organic veggies on our campus.
To make a chicken coop in class we need to work together to make sure everything fits together. It will also help our communication skills, because we need to know what is already done, what needs to be done and how it needs to be done. Another good skill that will be used is empathy. Working and taking care of someone or something other than ourselves will help enhance our compassion.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
We'd like to be able to assist both small and large projects. Our hope is to present a new relatively modest project each week, and then feature a more ambitious project with a long-term deadline, so we can chip away at it each week when our main project is completed. Since DonorsChoose has something similar to a "rec list", every time we create a flurry of activity on a project, even if the dollar amounts involved aren't large, we can push the project up that list so it gets shown to more donors outside Daily Kos. In that way, we can help finish projects that may be beyond our means when only our own dollars are considered.
LONG TERM PROJECT
Resources: Books to improve literacy, acquire new vocabulary, and learn to love reading.
School Poverty Level: Highest
Location: MacDowell Montessori School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Total: $512.32
Still Needed: $215.60 $86.19
Expires: July 30, 2016
Teacher’s Comments from Mr. Kargol:
My Students: Each week I bring in ten books from the public library. I read one at the beginning of our literacy time each AM, and another at the beginning of our math time in the PM. Reading to the students is critical to learning and the development of their lifelong relationship with the written word.
Our school is in a large city, with many of the challenges facing other cities this size. Our class is a self-contained, special education, behavior unit.
We're great kids! We just need a little extra help. Our classroom is designed to help us focus and learn.
My Project: “Children who fall seriously behind in the growth of critical early reading skills have fewer opportunities to practice reading. Evidence suggests that these lost practice opportunities make it extremely difficult for children who remain poor readers during the first three years of elementary school to ever acquire average levels of reading fluency." Torgeson, J. Avoiding the Devastating Downward Spiral, American Educator. (2004)
Having a classroom library gives students ready access to age appropriate books. Having books they love in the room compels them to read. Early readers begin by telling stories from what they see in pictures. They then recognize letters, words, and then simple sentences. Books inspire imagination, discussion, and language. Having a classroom library is a treasure.
You have to see the way students light up when it's time to hear a story to understand the amazing impact a book has. Many of these students don't have books at home.
This is their chance to experience the wonder a story can give. Please consider a donation to our classroom library.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
HOUSEKEEPING
Last week, our main project — INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO CODE!! — was completed. A class of gifted elementary school students in North Carolina will receive programmable robotic spheres.
See our list of successfully funded projects. We're up to 509!
When projects are not fully funded by their expiration date, donors are contacted by DonorsChoose and asked to choose another project to which to redirect their donations. Occasionally, a fully funded project is called off for some reason internal to the school/teacher, and funding is returned. We have no way of knowing why, but DonorsChoose handles those donations in the same way as for expired projects.
How is the poverty level defined at DonorsChoose.org?
Poverty level refers to the percentage of students at a given school who qualify for free and reduced lunch, which is considered a measure of economic need. To be deemed eligible for free lunch, a student's family income must be within 130% of the poverty line (a max of $29,055 for a family of four). For reduced lunch, the family income must be within 185% of the poverty level (a max of $41,348 for a family of four). Schools with 10%-39% of students receiving free/reduced lunch are denoted as "moderate poverty". Schools with 40%-64% of students receiving free/reduced lunch are denoted as "high poverty", while schools with 65%+ of students receiving free/reduced lunch are denoted as "highest poverty". For projects submitted from a school where free lunch rate data is unavailable or unreliable, "Poverty Data Unavailable" will appear.
More information:
DonorsChoose.org main page
DonorsChoose.org blog
About DonorsChoose.org
All DonorsChoose.org math & science projects search results
We are in no way affiliated with DonorsChoose.org, or any of the classroom projects presented for funding, except as specifically indicated (for example, when a kossack is the teacher).
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You are welcome to use The Inoculation Project avatar as your DonorsChoose avatar if you wish. If you need instructions for uploading it to your DonorsChoose profile, you'll find them in this diary.