Local teachers are getting a big boost before the school year starts on August 15th. Mt. Carmel resident and MCHS graduate Valerie Anderson has organized Community Classrooms 618 to help teachers with supplies that aren’t in the school’s budgets and oftentimes come out of the teacher’s pockets.
According to Anderson, teachers spend anywhere from $500 to $1,000 per school year of their own money for classroom supplies. Community Classroom 618 is an effort to come together and purchase items big or small, one or many from Amazon wishlists. Those who would like to participate can visit the wishlists and either order the items from Amazon or purchase them locally. Buyers can choose to remain anonymous or their name can be listed on the gift receipt.
As of Wednesday night, Anderson said 129 teachers in 9 area counties are participating in the program with the total amount of items purchased coming in at almost $6,570.67. For more information, you can go to the Community Classrooms 618 Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/communityclassrooms618/
There are many ways you can go about helping/donating. Close to 100 teachers from the 618 region have posted needs (and a few wants) to help better the education go thousands of children. These are all ways you can help:
1. If you do not want to online shop you can make a monetary donation and I will take that money and shop for you. You can designate a school/teacher/grade/etc if desired.
2. If you want to do the shopping (I think this is the fun part!) click on the links in the Community Classrooms 618 page and purchase whatever you want! You can choose for it to be an anonymous donation by clicking "do not include gift receipt" when checking out or you can type a note so the teacher knows who donated.
3. Adopting a classroom would be a clean swipe of the teacher's whole list! You can give me limit of what monetary amount you would like to stay under and I will match you with a classroom. Another way would be to do a random draw out of a hat to pick the classroom you sponsor. (Only issue is total price of entire list can vary drastically between classrooms).
4. Shopping local is also an option. Amazon lists give an option to "print list" and you can take it to local stores and match up the requested items. I would ask for someone from your business to deliver these to the school. The teacher can then remove the items from his/her online wishlist.
