Welcome to the final post in our Back to School Spotlight series! These posts showcase the creative ways educators have used Scholastic ClassroomsCount™ to purchase trusted materials to support their students throughout the school year.
Over the past year, teachers across the nation have created over 18,000 campaigns, raising over $2 million on Scholastic ClassroomsCount™, a fully crowdsourced fund for educators to buy resources for their classroom. Teachers don’t have to worry about organizing checks or cash, and contributors can feel confident that their funds stay in each teacher’s Scholastic account. Educators can spend every penny immediately across Scholastic at The Scholastic Teacher Store, Scholastic Book Clubs, The Scholastic Parent Store, and Scholastic Magazines+. In other words, there’s no need to reach a target goal to use the funds.
For our last post in this series, we chatted with Jordyn deGlas, a third-grade teacher from West Lawn, Pennsylvania who teaches history. When she discovered that most of her students had never visited Gettysburg, she used her ClassroomsCount™ funds to provide her students their own copy of I Survived the Battle of Gettysburg by Lauren Tarshis, ahead of a related classroom field trip.
What was your experience in raising funds through ClassroomsCount™?
My daughter read the I Survived series and I knew that I wanted to read it with my class. Most of my students had never been to Gettysburg. They love historical fiction, they love learning about history, and they ask lots of questions.
I asked my principal for permission to take a field trip to Gettysburg, and afterward I thought, ‘why don't I actually teach them everything before we go?’ I started diving into how I could do this, but to ensure each student could have a copy of the book, I needed to raise the funds. Friends had a few suggestions, but none really appealed to me. Eventually, I happened upon the ClassroomsCount™ campaign on the Scholastic teacher website and decided to try it out. I launched my campaign on Facebook, and I had a ton of shares. That is where most of my contributors came from and the amount kept doubling. I thought, if it’s going to keep doubling, I might as well get everything I can for these students. So I did.
What impact has ClassroomsCount™ had on your students?
I had many students in my classroom go back to Gettysburg a second time during the summer vacation after reading the books we purchased from ClassroomsCount™. A lot of my students ended up purchasing the book for themselves as well. It was really exciting to see that they involved themselves in this lesson so much that they pursued it at home. They dived right into it and wanted to continue learning more.
What are you most excited about this school year?
Every single student is different. Finding out what actually excites them and gets them excited to come to school, or what they're not so excited about, is probably the best part of it. That's what actually ended up bringing on this whole project. I found something that they were really interested in and I ran with it.
I ended up using my leftover funds to purchase Even Superheroes Make Mistakes to help reinforce our lesson in practicing a growth mindset, and how we can learn from everything, even our mistakes. I also used funds to continue building my classroom library this year. I'm going to start the year with new chapter books for my students, so when they come in they will have a chapter book that we'll share together.
If you’re a teacher, you can set up a ClassroomsCount™ campaign in minutes and share it with your friends, family, and community. Sharing on social media makes it four times more likely that your campaign will get funded.
If you’re not a teacher but want to support classrooms, ClassroomsCount™ is a fantastic way to do so. Check out these inspiring campaigns, and fund a teacher’s campaign today to get books, magazines, and products in kids’ hands all year long!
