InTASC STANDARD 10: The teacher seeks appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to

take responsibility for student learning, to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other
school professionals, and community members to ensure learner growth, and to advance the
profession.
Name of Artifact: Donorschoose.org project
Course: N/A
Date:
TESOL Standards Addressed: 5a
Rationale:
Donorschoose.org is an organization of people committed to helping educators provide
the services that they need to students. Some of the donors are educators or retired educators;
others are just humanitarians who would like to see all students with access to an equal and
equitable education. An article on the humble beginnings of Donorschoose relates:
Back in 2000, Charles Best was teaching at Wings Academy, an alternative high school
in the Bronx, when he got the idea for a Web site where teachers could solicit donations
for class projects. With help from his students, DonorsChoose.org soon was born. Last
year, the site won Amazon.com's Nonprofit Innovation Award. So far, DonorsChoose has
generated more than $8 million for projects that have touched 479,000-plus students in
the cities and states it serves (p.14).
I have posted three projects on this website. Two have already been funded, and the supplies
shipped to the school within two weeks time. Along with each project, I included a reasoning
behind my request, which allowed me to meditate on how the supplies would further student
learning of Spanish.
The first project, which I have included as a representation of this standard, was a request
for books in the target language of Spanish. These books range from third to fifth grade level, so
they are just right for high school English-speaking students. Some of the books are about
holidays like Day of the Dead. Others introduce important historical figures like Frida Kahlo and
characters like Don Quixote. Students will learn the vast majority of their vocabulary from
reading secularly, so these books served as authentic sources to demonstrate how students could
speak and write in their target tongue. They also taught them much about Hispanic culture. Yet
another project of mine was a request for a classroom set of Spanish-English dictionaries. We
use dictionaries quite a bit in the classroom, and all students were not mature enough to use their
cell phones solely for this purpose without being distracted by text messages and social media
applications. However, after three years of requiring Spanish-English dictionaries on their
school-supply list, I found that many students and parents lacked transportation to leave our rural
town and visit a Walmart, at least 30 minutes away, to obtain one. Others did not have debit
cards, so they could not order them online. So as to not be a burden on my students, I asked
donors to provide these dictionaries so that I could take them off the school supply list. The last
project that I posted is a classroom tablet. Technology is a useful tool in a foreign language
classroom. There are so many games and online assessment tools where a tablet would come in
handy. We are hoping to receive it very soon! Being a part of the Donorschoose community has
allowed me to collaborate with people all over the world to advance my profession and to take
responsibility for student learning.

Reference
Digging up classroom dollars on DonorsChoose. (2006). Curriculum Review, 46(3), 14–15.
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