Donors Choose Helps Teachers Keep the Virtual Learning Happening

Posted by Kara Bachman | May 14, 2020

Donors Choose is a charity website where donors can earmark funds for specific teachers in specific schools. Over the years, many teachers across the state of Mississippi — particularly in economically-disadvantaged communities — have posted very specific classroom needs/goals/requests and photos of their classrooms in action, and have found donors willing to provide essential funding.

The requests are very specific, and may range from elementary teachers needing basics such as art supplies and paper to high school music teachers needing new classroom instruments. A specific classroom, teacher and group of kids is ordinarily helped through the Donors Choose system. In this way, there are actual names and faces connected to the donor’s charity dollars. Usually, the donor will receive a “thank you” note sent directly from the teacher.

Due to the Covid-19 social distancing, kids have been at home and parents across Mississippi are either homeschooling or looking to their kids’ teachers to provide online coursework or point them to community resources that will keep children engaged.

Although it is operating differently than the usual Donors Choose programs, the charity’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic is to help fund teachers who are working to get school supplies, lesson plans, and other essentials in the hands of their students who are disadvantaged and lacking in at-home learning resources.

As of the time of this post, the program had already raised almost 7-million dollars to help teachers keep their current and former at-risk students in the learning loop.

Donors who are able to help — or Mississippi teachers who need assistance in doing this — might want to check out the program, which may be found by clicking here.

A brief summary posted by Donorschoose.org explains the basics:

“Here’s how it works:

You make a donation of any amount to Keep Kids Learning.
All donations go to teachers at schools serving low-income communities where most students are eligible for free and reduced lunch.
Teachers select the materials they need and distribute them to students at home.”

About The Author

Kara Bachman

Kara Bachman is a Managing Editor for Parents & Kids. She's also a book editor, former newspaper reporter, and is author of the humor essay collection, "Kissing the Crisis," which deals with the zanier aspects of parenting, relationships and turning 40. She's read her work on NPR radio and over 1,500 items have appeared in dozens of literary and commercial publications, including The Writer, The Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and Nola.com, Dogster, Mississippi Magazine, American Fitness and many more. She's a New Orleans native, but lived for over a dozen years on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, including during 2005 when her house was flooded by Hurricane Katrina. She's a mom to two teenagers.