Adopt-A-Classroom is a nonprofit organization that helps teachers get money directly into their classrooms without worrying about budgetary beaurocracy. Nobody tells the teacher how to spend the money; it’s donated to your classroom, so it’s your call. This year, I got money for:

1. ten headsets with microphones; now my students can record answers in Audacity, a program I’ll go over in a blog coming soon. They can also record narrations in PowerPoint presentations.
2. 512 mb USB drives for every student; now my students can keep all their work on their keychain rather than in a giant 3-ring notebook. It’s saved the school hundreds of dollars in copies already.
3. an extra printer with ink; now my student can print color copies or black and white for when they do need an occasional hard copy.
4. 10 USB optical mouses; now my students don’t take the balls out (why do kids do that?), the mouses actually work instead of getting filled with crud, and they have the little wheel on the top of the mouse that makes navigation easy.
5. flowers and a terrarium; now my classroom looks and smells nice. Of course, the terrarium has a big Venus Fly Trap and lots of baby crickets… kind of a guy’s version of a flower garden.
6. a scanner; now I can take old handouts, scan them to .pdf format, email them to the kids’ free google accounts, and the kids can keep them on their USB drives. Again, it’s paper-free. I can also scan in handouts and then project the .pdf version on the wall using my digital projector.
7. a digital projector, which is incredibly valuable in myriad ways. More on that in future blogs.

All you have to do is sign up for an account. After you sign in, you’ll follow the steps to ask for cash. It’s all self-explanatory, so I won’t redundantly list the instructions here.

There are a couple of little tidbits I will divulge though.

1. The staff at Adopt-A-Classroom will answer your emails personally and quickly.

2. When you get a cash donation, you do not have to spend it on the stores the website provides. If you email them and tell them that you can spend the money better locally, then they’ll just ask you for a receipt and then reimburse you.

They’re great, because they handle all the tax documentation that your donators might need. Most importantly, though, since ‘you’ solicited the money, you decide how it’s spent.

Now it’s time to think about all those contacts you have outside the world of education. All you need is email addresses. Who has money and might donate personally? What businesses might donate to your classroom for the tax break? What are you teaching that people in the community might be excited about? Who might be excited about it? What could you buy to make the lessons really cool for kids?
Now go get some cash!

-Shu