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GLAD Science Kits and Social Studies Kits

I am requesting $320 to purchase educational materials for three school units. Each bin will include age appropriate books, content related pretend play items (such as bug boxes and nets), hands on activities (such as glo-germ handwashing), and other curriculum extension items (such as garden planning materials).

Best practices in early childhood education includes hands on activities that use realistic items, role playing, and pretend play. These experiences allows students to practice using academic and content vocabulary and reinforces content concepts. The items purchased with the dollars4schools funding will purchase materials for 3 units: safety/hygiene, life science, and community workers.

ECRA Calming Corners and Quiet Spaces Project

Scho ol: El Camino Real Academy

El Camino Real Academy is a Title 1 dual-language (Spanish-English) school on the southside of Santa Fe. In 2017 we began implementing a research-based, trauma informed approach at ECRA. We know first-hand that trauma can make it difficult for children to learn, create, and sustain healthy relationships, and behave appropriately in the classroom. A trauma sensitive school helps build resiliency and benefits all our students.

To this end we are establishing Calming or Quiet Corners in our K-5th grade classrooms. These will be a quiet part of the room that has soft furnishings and soothing materials to help our students deescalate when they are upset. The idea is for students to be able to briefly get away from frustrating or upsetting tasks or overstimulating situations. They learn to take a pause and self-monitor when they are feeling emotionally dysregulated. They rejoin their class after their brief, restorative time.

Calming Corners include: Bean bag chairs, soft rug, relaxation CD and player, visual calming strategies, and a visual timer. We are looking to equip approximately 24 classrooms as we have 4 classes in each grade level. Calming Corner materials cost approximately $100 per class.

We know that students who learn to “regulate, relate, and reason” are less likely to be referred for school discipline and are likely to have better attendance and grades. They are more likely to be able to express their emotions in a healthy way and are less likely to revert to aggressive acts. This leads to greater possibilities for success at school and life beyond.

We invite you to join us in this exciting opportunity to transform the social emotional learning of our students.

Theme Books for World Connections

Scho ol: El Camino Real Academy

The pre-k program at El Camino Real is a Dual Language program working with children ages four and five. Our curriculum is play-based and it is very important for us to offer our students the material they need to support their imagination and play.
Thematic units are very important in our classroom because our little language learners are making connections between languages, content, and the world.

The pre-k classroom is in need of theme books to support each unit through out the school year. Each learning center, including literacy, is connected to a theme. Some of our themes are families, community helpers, transportation, buildings, health and nutrition, and weather.

Please help support our new world connections through the books that support our themes and interests!

Forensic Science Studies

School: Gonzales Community School

I am requesting funds for a Science kit for an upper level classroom.

Enrichment students use hands-on forensic medicine tools and chemicals to reveal clues that will enable the solving of a crime mystery.
Students will then team in groups to develop their own mystery for other teams to solve with the science tools and materials.

BREATHE, MOVE, AND THRIVE: Mindfulness and Yoga

School: Atalaya Elementary School

I will be attending the Next Generation Yoga for Kids Certification (95 hour training) to be used when working with PK-6th grade students at Atalaya Elementary this summer in the SummerCAMP (17-18), Enrichment and aftercare, starting fully, next school year 918-19) in the classroom and in aftercare programs. Additionally, I will support teachers with training of toga poses, breathing, and mindfulness strategies to implement in their own practice.

Funding will help to reimburse for yoga and mindfulness materials (mats, books, blocks, cds, etc) and assist with the teacher training expenses.ppropriate environment and need help to do so. Thank you!

Creating a Developmentally Appropriate Environment Project

School: Carlos Gilbert Elementary School

I am asking for funding to help set up my kindergarten classroom with hands on learning centers, flexible seating, leveled readers and an updated library/reading nook.

My name is Shari Cross and I have been a teacher at Carlos Gilbert Elementary for 8 years. My first six years here I spent teaching kindergarten. Over those years I accumulated wonderful resources for my students and had engaging centers and hands on activities for them. Last school year I changed grade levels and moved out of my classroom. Though I enjoyed the new grade level, I knew in my heart that kindergarten was where I belonged, so I moved back to kindergarten for the 2017 – 2018 school year. Unfortunately, when I moved back, I had to move into a different classroom. The classroom I am now in is a transition room that has accommodated different grade levels depending on student enrollment. Because of this, the classroom has inadequate supplies and hardly any materials that I can use for learning centers for kindergarten. Through the help of my school and hundreds of my own dollars, I have done my best to make this school year work, but my classroom is still lacking learning centers, a decent library, leveled readers, and enough seats to provide flexible seating and to not have to make my students move their chairs with them when rotating centers.

I would love to be able to provide my students with a warmer and developmentally appropriate environment and need help to do so. Thank you!

Set-up A Science Room

School: Nina Otero Community School

Two volunteers are being paid to set up a resource room that will make science materials available to middle school science teachers for hands on explorations. We have a number of units that were replaced in the elementary grades that contain basics that can be used in the middle school classes. These classes have new teachers who are relying on text books and basic materials purchased with their own funds. This program will help enhance their lessons with hands on explorations for students.

I am requesting $500 to pay 2 volunteers who are sorting through various donated materials, Some funds will also be used to fill in gaps for additional materials.

Accelerated Book Program

School: Acequia Madre Elementary School

I am requesting $1,000 to use toward my library. I do not have any level books, which make it hard to determine the exact reading levels per individual. These funds will help our students became less frustrated because they will have books at their level. It will also help our higher students by engaging them in interesting and advanced books. Please help our students set the foundation for a lifelong love for reading!!!
Many Thanks ~ Ms. Kat

Teen Tutor Training

School: Capital High School

Reading Quest provides ongoing literacy training for teen parents in the GRADS program at Capital High School, which prepares them to read aloud to babies and young children and eventually teach their own children how to read. This training also enriches their own reading skills and builds their literacy courage. We are requesting funding to purchase baby board books, easy readers, and literacy materials for the teen-parent classes. We also provide training for Capital High AVID students and stipends for high school students who are dedicated to sharing their love of reading with young, low-income, struggling readers.

Reading Quest partners with the Teen Parent and Avid Programs at Capital High School. We offer professional literacy training for students who want to teach their own children to read and who want to work with young children in our community who are 1-2 years behind grade level in reading. Young children are particularly motivated when teenagers are reading with them and encouraging them to persevere and work hard. Our teens become well versed in the Growth Mindset attitude of never giving up and persevering when the going gets hard. We train teen tutors using multi-sensory, hands-on, phonics-based strategies that support young struggling readers.
Reading Quest has been extremely effective in increasing children's reading levels. During the past six years, our summer students have made, on average, one year's growth during each two week session, as measured by a standardized reading assessment. Many of our students have learning challenges and/or are English Language Learners.
Approximately 25% of the students in the Santa Fe Public Schools are proficient in reading at grade level. Failure in learning to read by the end of third grade is, arguably, the single greatest determinant of subsequent academic failure - and the single best early predictor of eventually dropping out of school. The mission of Reading Quest is to help children who are having trouble learning to read become strong, enthusiastic readers. We provide individual and group tutoring; intensive two-week reading camps for groups of low-income children; and workshops, training, coaching, & mentoring for public school teachers.

Piano Performance Mastery

School: El Camino Real Academy

I request a funding for El Camino Real Academy (former Agua Fria Elementary school) piano students.

El Camino Real piano students are very talented group of students. They work hard and play the piano very well. So many of them dream of being students of New Mexico School for the Arts. However they do not have funds for a piano tutor. I help them as much as I can after dismissal of school, but they need a professional piano teacher who would help them to prepare for audition for NM School for the Arts. Audition for the School of the Arts are usually held at the beginning of February. It would in the best interest of my students if they could receive financial help as soon as it is possible, so they can get ready. Please, help my piano students.

Volunteer Background Check Assistance

School: Multiple Santa Fe Public Schools

As the SFPS Volunteer Coordinator, and in an effort to encourage a more diverse volunteer population, I would like to offer paid background fees for up to 50 volunteer applicants to distributed throughout 5 different schools within the Santa Fe Public School District. Certain demographic criteria, including a residence radius of applicants who live within 6 blocks of the schools' attendance area will be required to be eligible for usage of the background check funds.

Hands-on History of Photography at Monte Del Sol Charter School

School: Monte Del Sol Charter School

Please support photography students participating in a hands-on/experiential 19th century photographic history project - Hands on History of Photography.

This project will directly deal with the 1851 discovery of the collodion wet plate process. Students will read historical texts, view historical images and make in-camera renditions of modern day collodion photographs.

The funding is needed for all consumable materials including silver nitrate (fairly expensive), metal and glass plates for making the images, and all of the various chemicals needed for processing

Science at the Bradbury in Los Alamos

School: El Camino Real Academy

Several years ago, Dollars4Schools funded my request to pay for buses to take my students to the Bradbury Science Museum. It was so valuable. I want to take the students I have now. We'll need two 44-student buses,

8th grade science is physical science, including physics and chemistry, and the Bradbury is the best place in the state for this. My students have never been. At the Bradbury they will learn about cryogenics and liquid nitrogen, which is critical to a deep understanding phase change and chemical versus physical interactions; about radioactivity and the atom; about our history; and about rockets and forces, motion and gravitation. The museum visit will anchor conversations and activities in class for the entire spring semester. At this dual language school I teach my classes in Spanish, but the kids are bilingual.

Friday Service Projects at The MASTERS Program

School: The MASTERS Program Early College Charter High School

The MASTERS Program is an early college charter school on the campus of SFCC, serving a diversity of students, many of whom are the first generation in their families to go to college. The program allows students to move at their own pace and integrates high school classes with college classes based on each individual. We also provide a strong supportive community and service to the greater Santa Fe community.

Friday Projects are service-learning based and take our students in faculty-led groups out into the Santa Fe community every Friday. From the Humane Society, to The Horse Shelter, to Habitat for Humanity to Pinon Elementary School and to working with the county on trails, and more, we are building character and giving teens a sense of value with this program. Our request is for support running a bus that can take students to these projects. As a charter school, we cannot afford our own buses and the cost of renting each Friday is approximately $400/day.