Thank You Notes From Students: Donors Choose

Frank's coat-of-arms with removable swords.

Dan and I recently made a contribution to a "A Knight's Tale: Reading Adventure!" project of daughter Chris Livingstone through Donorschoose.org Our contribution helped to buy The Knight at Dawn books the students read in connection with their Social Studies unit on the Middle Ages. We recently received thank you notes from the students in her ESL class at Brogden Middle School in Durham.

As part of the thank you letters, Chris had the students design a coat-of-arms.  "First, they selected personal qualities they valued. Then they looked at a table of symbols used to express these values in the days of knights and created an original coat-of-arms using two colors and two other symbols."

Frank said, we have fun reading...thank you...thank you... He chose a snake as one of his symbols to show that ...I am an ambitious person. I added a sword to show that I want to help win wars.

Alexander's coat-of-arms.

Alexander said ...the tiger shows I am a fierce person...the colors blue and red symbolize loyalty and power.

Patricia's coat-of-arms.

 Patricia said: ...the colors red and green symbolize power and happiness. The snake shows I am an ambitious person.

Priscilla's coat-of-arms.

Priscilla said, ...The animal fox shows that I am an intelligent person. I added a crescent to show that I want to get a good education during my life.

I wish I could show you each of the student's designs. They all did a good job, and we were very pleased with the thank you notes they sent.

Look at That! Eyeglasses

For Christmas this year, Dan and I are giving daughter Chris Livingstone a donation to DonorsChoose in her honor. DonorsChoose is an online charity that makes it easy to help students in need through school donations. Chris teaches ESL at a high poverty middle school in Durham, NC.  She is an innovative, creative and dedicated teacher who uses DonorsChoose to get all kinds of materials for her students.  Currently she has had 92 projects funded (Chris' Projects).

Wow! I can see clearly now.

A recent project allowed three of her students to get eyeglasses.  In thanking her donors for funding this project Chris said:

"Thank you for providing me with one of the most gratifying experiences of my career! Last night, three of my students drove with me to an optical center in a drugstore for eye exams and eyeglasses. I used the "squint factor" to select these students from a larger group who have obvious difficulty with vision. All three, as expected, had a very clear need for corrective lenses and, ninety minutes later, after the incredible first experience of seeing clearly, we drove back to school with glasses for each student."

Let me check out these frames.

Chris almost always has some project in the pipeline at DonorsChoose, and we hope this Christmas gift will allow her to announce to her class "Merry Christmas, another project has been funded."



Photos for this post by Chris Livingstone.