No one would fix a car without the proper tools.  What good is soccer without a soccer ball?  And how effective is teaching without proper teaching resources?

In Mae Sot, migrant school teachers struggle with resource shortages all the time.

a migrant nursery classroom

At the elementary school level, one teacher in whose class I teach English, bemoaned the fact that she had no budget for printing coloring sheets and so when we brought in 30 photocopied coloring sheets of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus, along with pencil crayons for the whole class, she was ecstatic.  In high school Science classes, one teacher told us that students simply memorize chemical formulas from photocopied books, instead of being able to actually run experiments.  Needless to say, every grade has a shortage of resources.

nursery teachers in a "learning cluster"

In response to this crisis, we’ve been asked to find a way to bring resources to classrooms.  And so, we’ve developed a 4-School Cluster System focusing on Nursery (preschool) children.  Migrant school Nursery teachers are already in “learning clusters” for idea sharing and encouragement. In this system, a Nursery teacher will use a bin of resources for one week and then pass it on to the next teacher on the list.  After 4 weeks, each school will have had the bin for one week.  Because the nursery classes use 8 monthly themes during the school year, we will develop 8 bins. Each bin costs approximately $100.  48 migrant schools have nursery/kindergarten classes and so we need to develop 12 cluster groups (4 schools/group).  And so to summarize the financial need, we need $800 for each cluster and $9600 to be able to provide for all 12 clusters.

a sample nursery resource bin

inside a resource bin

We are so excited to announce that with your generosity, we’ve already raised  $3000 for Teacher Resource Kits!  In other words, we are able to provide resources to 3 (and almost 4)  clusters of preschool teachers.

We would like to start the same system for elementary math teachers, providing hands on learning opportunities in developing numeracy.  At the high school Science level, we are still at the very beginning of the process, putting together a list of what teachers need to teach biology, chemistry and physics.

Would you spread the word and help us reach the rest of our goal?  As Bob and Larry say in …”It’s for the children.”

We’ve prepared a short video to show you the problem and the solution!  Enjoy!