Dec. 31--Julie Ahern likes to tell her second-grade students at Andrew Cooke Magnet School that as "21st-century kids, you need to learn 21st-century things."
Her classroom has nearly enough laptops and tablets for each student to have their own device, along with a 3-D printer, robotics kits and subscriptions to a kid-level news magazine, she said. They recently got a webcam that will let students go on "virtual field trips" through videoconferences with experts at museums and historical sites.
None of it was paid for by Waukegan School District 60, Ahern said. Instead, all came through donations, most in response to requests Ahern posted on DonorsChoose.org, a crowdfunding website focused on education.
DonorsChoose lets teachers post requests for classroom supplies. If enough donations come in to pay for that request, DonorsChoose purchases the exact items sought and sends them to the school, notifying both teacher and principal, said Katie Bisbee, spokeswoman for DonorsChoose.
Ahern said funding is tight in the district, and while school parent-teacher organizations help, most can't afford big-ticket items like laptops. Neither could she, on the $30 teachers are given for office supplies, Ahern said.
"This is the perfect option to seek those kinds of materials," said Ahern, who has found donors to back 86 projects. "I can just go out and do it."
Ahern isn't the only Waukegan teacher turning to the website to fund classroom projects. Since the start of the 2013-14 school year, Lake County teachers raised about $625,000 through the website, about 75 percent of which went to District 60 schools, according to DonorsChoose data.
In addition to Ahern's current requests, including a drone students would use to learn about art and architecture, some district teachers are seeking funds for basic supplies, such as new books for the library, notebooks and art supplies.
Another is trying to take students on a class trip to St. Louis, and John Laystrom, an eighth-grade math teacher at Robert Abbott Middle School, is trying to raise money to buy his students a 3-D printer.
"I want to get as much technology in front of them as I can because they don't have access to it like other kids I've taught," said Laystrom, in his first year at District 60 after teaching at a Barrington district where tight budgets weren't an issue.
"It's something that's on the cutting edge, and I hope it can generate some excitement because I have some pretty intelligent kids, they just don't have access to things that let them prove it, even to themselves, and get them engaged in learning," he said.
People who have donated so far have a tie to the district, including a group of alumni from the Class of 1957, he said, but Ahern said she's received donations from people across the country.
Bisbee said Waukegan's blend of requests for necessary supplies and enrichment tools bucks a trend DonorsChoose has seen since the recession.
At both low-income and wealthier schools, teachers are making more requests for both essential supplies -- such as paper, pencils and dictionaries -- and enrichment materials than in previous years, according to data gathered by DonorsChoose. At wealthier districts, there has been little change in the overall share of requests for non-essential items since 2008, while lower-income districts saw a spike in the share of requests for items considered basic needs.
"We definitely see pockets of teachers or schools that go against the grain, and it's usually where there are a couple teachers or innovative principals encouraging and challenging them to post creative projects," Bisbee said.
DonorsChoose has seen a "huge increase" in requests for technology over the years, particularly tablets, Bisbee said. Higher-cost technology requests are less likely to be funded than cheaper items, but about 70 percent of projects overall are successful, Bisbee said.
Ahern said one of the most fun tools her class received was the 3-D printer, which they use to build sculptures demonstrating math concepts or models of things they're studying, whether the Egyptian pyramids or the Lincoln Memorial.
When a boy from another class was puzzled by the device, one of her quieter students confidently explained how it worked, she said.
"To him, it's science fiction. To her, it's everyday life," she said. "That's what I'm trying to expose them to."
District 60 is relatively hands-off when it comes to crowdfunding, Ahern and Laystrom said. Teachers need approval before getting technology that can go online but are otherwise free to seek funding and materials, Ahern said.
That means extra marketing work for teachers, with some students getting access to resources others in the district don't, but Laystrom said he'd rather see at least some kids benefit now rather than waiting for the district to fund something across the board.
He and Ahern -- both of whom worked in business before becoming teachers -- said the process is easy enough for any teacher with an idea they'd like to fund.
Ahern recommends taking advantage of the website's matching programs, where a major donor agrees to fund a large share of the cost if the teacher can raise the rest. It also helps to break up expensive requests into multiple projects with $200 to $300 price tags, which have a better chance of succeeding, she said. Ahern's classroom laptops didn't come in a single set all at once -- 14 came from a local donor with the rest funded one or two at a time through DonorsChoose, she said.
Teachers also can't just post requests and wait for cash to roll in, but need to actively promote projects on social media, Ahern said. But the extra effort pays off, they said.
"I'm totally on the side that we as teachers should be doing everything we can for the kids," Laystrom said.
lzumbach@tribpub.com
