Cents in Action: Against All Odds

For this week’s 'Cents in Action' post we have the pleasure of sharing a narrative from Carol Salva, a teacher at Stratford High School at Spring Branch ISD in Houston, TX. Carol used PledgeCents to fund a trip to the aquarium for her refugee students.

Spring Branch Education Foundation has raised over $26,800 with PledgeCents!

I didn’t know that I would be back in the classroom last year and I was certainly not prepared to meet the needs of a unique group of middle schoolers. Our road of learning was full of challenges but with the help of PledgeCents, we were able to take a well deserved study trip that was both educational and a real treat for my students.

I had been a specialist for over 7 years and suddenly found myself in charge of an ESL class of recent immigrants who were refugees from different African and Asian countries. I took over this class at the end of the first semester. Many teachers will empathize when I say that I wasn’t prepared sufficiently! I was honored to be teaching these students but it was a challenge at first. Many of these students were coming from countries of unrest. Many were coming from countries where education was inconsistent. Many were new the norms of formal education. Things were strained at first but soon these students began working together well and through hard work and perseverance, they were on their way to closing their education gaps and second language learning began to accelerate.

Early on I realized that thematic units of study, tied to grade-level learning standards, were going to be very important for this multi-aged group. I worked with a partner teacher, Katherine Dierschke, and we decided that an ecosystem unit was important for the second semester. These students were in 6-8th grade and they would eventually be assessed on topics such as food chains, life cycles and biomes. The students gained considerable English through the engaging content. We brought in many visuals and realia from the beach which is about an hour away from our school. When Katherine and I saw how excited the students were about the shells and sand we brought in, we just knew we needed to get them to an aquarium where they could experience some of what they had been working so hard to learn.

This was when I turned to PledgeCents. Earlier in the year the founders had been gracious enough to pay our class a visit to give a talk on entrepreneurship and also to explain more about fund raising to me and my fellow teachers. They had already funded a cause for us so we wondered if we would be successful in creating another cause so soon. But our idea was to take the students to the downtown aquarium where they could go on a scavenger hunt for the living and non-living things we had been studying. We knew that helping them with this real world experience would help level the playing field in their future science classes. We also hoped to raise a extra few dollars per student to allow them to ride a few rides at the aquarium. There is a train-shark voyage and a Ferris wheel. Many of the students had never been on rides like these.

PledgeCents and our community came through for us again. We hit our goal and we were able to buy passes that gave all students their experience in the aquarium and also the rides as a celebration of all their hard work.
We are so proud of all the students and the progress they made. We are grateful to the volunteers that helped us and also to the community who donated to make the day possible.
Thank you for supporting us, PledgeCents. We can’t give these experiences to our students without you!

*Carol was not compensated for this post.

If you have any questions, email us at info@pledgecents.com.