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Donors provide supplies to Youngstown schools
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Makenna Ploessel, 6, uses a Leapfrog electronic pen and headphones to make her way through a book, using both audible and visual cues to learn. Makenna is in kindergarten in Jessica Redmond’s class at Taft Elementary School in Youngstown. The device is one of the educational materials Redmond received after collecting donations online through DonorsChoose.org. The website allows teachers to post the projects or materials they’re requesting and allows people to contribute to them.
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Above, Josiah Young, 5, participates in an exercise matching words and images with their beginning letter in Kim Marzano’s kindergarten class at Taft Elementary School in Youngstown. Teachers at the school use DonorsChoose.org to garner donations to buy teaching materials for their classrooms.
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Teachers at one city school depend on the kindness of strangers — and a few friends and family members — to buy learning tools for their students.
Kindergarten teachers Jessica Redmond, Kim Marzano and Laura Campana; first-grade teacher Vanessa Weikart; and Debbie Bowers, who teaches third grade, use DonorsChoose.org to get supplies donated.
“It has saved my teaching life,” said Redmond, who was the first at the school to use the site.
Teachers post information about their school, students and the supplies they need. Donors can search projects by state, city, school or subject area and contribute the amount they choose.
“It started with friends and family who would donate for my birthday, but it’s mostly people that I don’t even know,” Redmond said.
DonorsChoose was started by teachers in the Bronx, N.Y.
“Our mission is to improve public education by empowering every teacher to be a change-maker and enabling any citizen to be a philanthropist,” the website says.
A line of numbers helps Redmond’s students with counting, while Leap Frog learning devices teach about letter recognition, letter sounds and words and several other items.
“Some kids can’t identify letters, but I have two students who are on a first-grade reading level,” Redmond said.
The Leap Frog device is useful for both.
Darnell Jones, 6, leafed through a booklet of animal photographs, using the device to identify each one and listen to some details about it.
“That’s a piranha,” Darnell said. “They eat fast.”
The students get excited when the packages of new materials arrive.
“It’s like Christmas,” Redmond said.
The program allows teachers to provide materials for their students without having to spend their own money.
Weikart, a first-year teacher, estimated that she shelled out about $1,500 from her own pocket at the beginning of this school year.
“This has helped so much,” Weikart said.
Her students have word magnets they can use to spell, categorize and use in sentences.
The tools are making a difference, the teachers say.
Weikart said she has some students who have gone up nine reading levels in three months.
Davon Merriweather, 7, and Nevaeh Rudolph, 6, pulled sight-words out of a container and affixed them to a magnetic board. One column was for words they know, the other, for words with which they’re unfamiliar.
The first column was full.
Marzano’s class received tools to practice letters and their sounds.
“M, which alpha-friend begins with M?” the teacher quizzed her students.
“Mimi Mouse,” they shout in unison.
The students drew cards bearing a word and picture and placed them next to the corresponding first letter.
Dylan Dee, 5, picked “marbles,” explaining that his baby sitter has a game with marbles before placing his card in the slot for “M.”
Campana’s class was making thank-you notes for the donors who helped buy alphabet balls, alpha stamps and other learning tools. The program asks that classes write thank-you notes to donors and send photographs of students.
Shelby Carswell, 7, used a marker to color a heart on the front of her thank-you card.
“It’s nice to see how many people really want to contribute to education,” Campana said.