Ways That You Can Help

Okay so I have gone a little blog happy tonight but I wanted to get a lot of information out there.

This past week we had a book fair at our school where Scholastic came and set up hundreds of books for our students to browse and buy. The classes also had the opportunity to raise money in their classes by bringing in change to buy books for the class.

My kids are very poor but somehow came up with $40 in pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. We more than doubled the next closest class. It was a very exciting moment for us and we get a party out of it. I have always been incredibly competitive as many of you know and my kids have taken on that persona. If you ask any of my kids which the best class in the school is they will give you a “are you kidding me” look and say matter-of-factly, Mr. Rubin’s class. LOVE IT!

So during this book fair I was thinking of buying a whole bunch of books for our classroom because my kids could use extra books to read in class and right before I was about to spend a lot of my own money, the founders of our school, Mr. and Mrs. Williams gave each Primary teacher $150 to spend on books for our kids. It was a true blessing to the kids and they have been fawning over all the new books. It is incredible.

This got me thinking that before we know it, the holidays will be here and if I can give my kids one gift during this year, it will be a love of reading because if you love to read you are an independent learner and that drive for knowledge can get you so far in the world and can give these kids steps up to places they never dreamed of.

So along this path I want to give each one of my kids a book for the holidays. I am going work on coming up with the exact books and will create a post on Donors Choose so that people can give money towards the books and get a write off for it.

So I want you all to think about whether you would be willing to donate a couple of dollars to buy a kids who may not have any books, one book for the holidays.

Another thing that I am doing in my classroom also has a lot to do with reading. Because so many of my students come into the year reading way below grade level, we have set the goal that each student will grow at least 1.5 to 2 grade levels in reading by the end of the year.

These are really lofty goals and are going to be very hard to reach. So to inspire the students to reach them, I have set up a race to college theme in the room. So the students all know where they are and where they need to get to in order to complete the 1.5 years of growth and when they reach that point, they will receive a college t-shirt.

So this is a call for old, used, new, really whatever, college t-shirts that you would be willing to donate to my kids. They dont have to be their size, the kids don’t really care. The important part is that they will have a college shirt.

If you have old college shirts sitting around that you don’t use or maybe have contacts at a local college that would be willing to donate shirts, I am sort of putting out feelers all over the place to see if I cannot reel in some shirts for the kids.

So let me know if you have any shirts that you would be willing to donate.

Thanks so much for all of your support. I cannot tell you how much my kids and I appreciate it. It really means a lot.