Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Law Students Blogs -> Urban Law Journal

Law Students

: Urban Law Journal

Make a Difference: #4

By 3L at Seton Hall University School of Law and Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review.

DonorsChoose offers excellent opportunities to become involved in supporting under-resourced classrooms around the country. The organization was launched by a former South Bronx public school teacher who saw first hand the scarcity of materials in public school classrooms. To date, DonorsChoose has brought more than $19,000,000 in support to nearly a 1,000,000 students from donors in all fifty states. This year alone, donors have funded nearly $900,000 worth of resources for students in need.

The program works as follows: teachers recognize a need in their classroom; post specific description of the project they are looking to fund, or resource they are seeking; donors search the funding requests (i.e., $60 for pencils, $3,000 to support a class trip) and choose which proposal they want to support (and how much of they want to support; i.e., you can donate $10 towards a $1000 project); donors eventually hear back from the students that benefited from the support.

Current proposals include:

A Louisiana high school teacher is requesting a projector, requested by a teacher who is seeking to restore a semblance of technology to his classroom, after all such resources were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

An Indiana middle school teacher is looking for support to provide books as prizes to give away for this year's reading challenge.

A speech pathologist in Oregon is requesting a digital video camera to assist students with Autism Spectrum Disorder better understand how their behavior/social skills affect people around them.

A K-2 grade special education teacher in Harlem, NY is asking for help in securing a Copernicus writing station to organize and motivate early writers.

Full post as published by Urban Law Journal on January 22, 2008 (boomark / email).