Donors Choose Gives Small School Opportunity

Not every day is the Orchard Public School awarded the $1,300 remainder from a Donors Choose grant by a single anonymous donor.

Five months after writing the initial grant on Donors Choose, Tami Kuhfal, the 5th grade teacher at Orchard, received an exciting email delivering the news that the school’s project had been fully funded.

“I was taking tickets down at the game, and checking my email when there was a huge lull. And it said, ‘Congratulations, you’ve been fully funded.’ And we still had $1,300 to go. And I opened it up, and couldn’t believe it. Fully funded? What? And it said, ‘Congratulations, an anonymous donor from Massachusetts.’ We don’t know the person. It’s just crazy,” she explained.

Sponsoring the school’s coding club and seeing the need for new technology in the school, Kuhfal took the leap and put together a grant on the teacher-based site, Donors Choose. In this grant, Kuhfal was required to submit a picture of her class, explain how many kids would benefit from the grant, and what the items would be used for. Within the request, she asked for three iPads and five Raspberry Pi’s.

Kuhfal explained that each item could be used in the classroom and in the Coding Club. The purpose of the iPads was to replace outdated technology owned by the school for the students to use to control the already-owned spheros. With the Raspberry Pi’s, the students will be able to learn coding more in depth with a tiny $35 computer.

She stated, “I’m really excited to see where the kids take it, because they always amaze me. Yeah know, I’m always learning so much with the kids.”

Hoping to continue to improve the school, she continues to work with her fellow teachers with their goals of a Makerspace, 3D Printers, and so much more.

Kuhfal proudly stated, “We just get really excited about what we can do for our kids. We have a great little school. I’m really proud of our school.”