Happy New Year! This week, we’re helping two Houston schools for preschool and elementary grades; one needs programmable robots, and the other, a variety of simple lab kits kids can use in their classroom “STEM Center”. 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.
Special tax message: DonorsChoose would like you to know that, if you find you need to make some more charitable contributions in this year for tax purposes, but do not have time to look through projects, you can make a lump-sum donation now that is credited to your account in this year, and then mete it out to projects of your choice any time within the ensuing year. (It’s like buying yourself a gift card.)
If you go to the DonorsChoose site before Jan. 1, you’ll see an orange banner across the top of the page, offering this option.
We’ll open with this project, promoted from being last week’s long-term project: helping a never-before-funded teacher bring simple programmable robots to her elementary-grade students. There’s a 1.5x matching offer from Verizon: Verizon is helping to give millions of kids the tech education they deserve. We're putting technology, access, and innovative learning programs in the hands of students to put them on the path to success.
MAIN PROJECT
Resources: Help me give my students an Introduction to STEAM by providing Dot & Dash Robots for us to explore Technology and Buddha Boards for us to explore Art!
Economic need: Nearly all students from low‑income households
Location: Pine Shadows Elementary School, Houston, Texas
Total: $592.34 (1.5x matching funds from Verizon)
Still Needed: $400.44 Completed! Thank you! Please see project below.
Teacher’s Comments from Mrs. Stringer:
My Students: Our students are amazing! We are a dual language, Title 1 school of 750 students with a high percentage of low-income households. Many of our students get to experience technology and robotics for the first time in our makerspaces and STEAM Labs on campus. The majority of these spaces have been funded by grants and now that we have a solid STEAM lab environment for our upper grades, I would like to focus on getting equipment to introduce STEAM to our younger students.
In the PSE Library, we are curious learners and love to explore Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics!
My Project: The older students in our school have been exposed to STEAM manipulatives through our 3D printer and littleBits library, but I would like to expand our STEAM lab for little hands!
Dash and Dot robots are a great introductory robot for the younger grade levels and we would like to try the challenge cards to introduce our students to beginning coding.
Another thing on our wish list are the Buddha Boards. We would like to put these boards in our STEAM Lab as a mindful art activity that can correlate to many of the science topics that we study. Finally, the augmented reality Merge Cubes will actually be a great way to inspire curiosity for all of our students!
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Meanwhile, in another Houston school, we have a chance to help with this ambitious long-term project while matching funds are still available to it. The project deadline isn’t until late April, but as we’ve seen, sometimes grants run out of money before the goal is reached. These matching funds are thanks to PNC Grow Up Great®: Extending the reach of innovative, high-quality resources and experiences in pre-K classrooms advances the program’s mission of inspiring great futures for young children.
LONG-TERM PROJECT
Resources: Help me give my students science kits and materials to explore in our STEM learning station.
Economic need: More than three-quarters of students from low‑income households
Location: Sheldon Early Childhood Academy, Houston, Texas
Total: $992.62 (2x matching funds from PNC Grow Up Great®)
Still Needed: $992.62 $389.92 ($195 from us)
Teacher’s Comments from Mrs. Zepeda:
My Students: I work in a Title I school where more than 80% of the students are economically disadvantaged. All of my students are English Language Learners. They are ready to learn a new language full of energy, curiosity, and questions.
In the mornings' students enter my room with smiles and are excited to learn something new.
They love to use their imagination to create pictures, build structures, and tell stories. As they learn new things, I can see the sparkle in their eyes as they build, create, and learn how to read and write.
My Project: STEM is something that schools have been exploring recently. In my classroom, I haven't been able to set up a STEM center because of a lack of Science materials. My students love going to the school's STEM lab, but only get to do it once a week. I would like to set up a STEM center in my classroom so that students have more time exploring science, technology, engineering and math skills.
All the science sets I have ordered like the crystal growing kit, life cycle kit, telescopes, and plant labs will be used to open up the Science part of our STEM center.
My students will be able to use them every other day as they rotate through all the centers in our classroom.
Exploring these Science kits will help them learn our Science objectives in a fun way and will also prepare them for our Science Fair which is a few months away!
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Our main project from last week was completed, with a big assist from our readers! Mr. Brown’s Michigan elementary school gives him no budget to buy books for his media center/library. We were able to help him get a wide assortment of books for various reading levels, thanks to the project Help Build Mr. Brown's Stem Library!
He writes: Thank you for making this project a reality for my students. I cannot wait to share these books with them as they take more control over their learning and increase their knowledge of STEM and problem solving strategies!!! I am beyond grateful to all of you as we teach our children to be problem solvers; not only in the classroom but in life!
Our Dollars at Work
Back in September, we helped Mr. Teague, a never-before-funded teacher at an Arkansas high school, in his effort to get new AP programs started in chemistry and environmental science, on a shoestring budget of course. The project was Chemistry Class in Arkansas. (More photos at the link.)
Thank you so much for donating to my chemistry class! You helped buy things that we use every week. We got disposable gloves and digital scales, and these are used in nearly every lab we do.
The greatest impact of your giving was a boost to students' morale. I let them read the well wishes you sent along with the donations. They were impressed that people with money to donate would donate to our science class. Students understand appreciation, and the whole picture, that people with good jobs donate money to give something back to studies they value, wasn't lost on my students.
My school purchased LabQuest monitors from Vernier to go with the outdated probes I found. Our next step is to use these probes in our laboratory exercises to gather and analyze data electronically.
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 797! The success-list diary also contains links and additional information about DonorsChoose.org.