We are kicking off the Girls Who Code Club virtually in January. This grant is for 30 books tied to the program and T-shirts to provide something tangible, uplifting/inspiring, build a group sense of community and provide community project goals to the girls who participate.
Visible Heart Health
We are requesting funds to purchase large television monitors and protective mounts to display critical education materials for our PE classes, as well as our students’ heart rates while they are exercising. This would coincide with our new Polar Heart Rate monitors that the students will be wearing during physical education classes. With these monitors, the teachers can display all of the information from each student and entire classes at the same time, similar to the current set up at all other school buildings (We are the only school without this technology set up). The district has put a lot of time and finances into these Polar Heart Rate monitors, and without a way to display the information, we cannot use them to their full capacity as an educational tool.
Diverse Texts for Learners of Spanish
In Spanish 1A students regularly participate in 5-10 minutes of Pleasure Reading in a second language. The relevant educational research has shown this to be a major driver of second language acquisition. The students have complete control over their reading choices, which currently include books about cultural legends, the Latino immigrant experience, ecosystems in Latin American and the everyday experiences of adolescents. More diverse books are needed, especially featuring Black and/or Muslim characters, in order to better represent and inform our student population.
Collaborative Outdoor Spaces
With the addition of two garage doors to the science courtyard at the middle school last year, we want to now add some outdoor spaces for students to collaborate and complete classwork during the warmer months of the fall and spring. Students love opening the garage doors and working outside but right now, there is no outdoor furniture for our students to access deterring them from using the space to its full potential. With access to furniture, the outdoor space would be a welcoming place for the students and allow an excellent space for labs to also be implemented.
