We’re Celebrating Oakland Teachers During #TeacherAppreciationWeek

By Stacey Childress, CEO

This is Teacher Appreciation Week. And today, May 7, is National Teacher Appreciation Day. We appreciate teachers every day, but during this week, we especially want to show how much we value their work. NewSchools is a national nonprofit that invests in teams of educators and innovators with the vision and skill to reimagine learning. Our work is literally not possible without teachers.

We support innovative public schools across the country, but wanted to show a little extra love to teachers in our hometown. That’s why we are excited to announce a special tribute to Oakland teachers!

Last month, NewSchools funded every DonorsChoose.org teacher project in Oakland. Although the intent was to celebrate Teacher Appreciation week, we thought it best to fund the projects as soon as possible, so teachers could have even more time to implement their project before the end of the school year.

Our gift fully supported 132 classroom projects impacting 15,500 students, and 94 teachers at 49 schools in Oakland, CA. That means teachers were able to acquire more than 800 books, 200 pieces of instructional technology, and nearly 200 pieces of sports equipment for 15,000 students across the city.

All day, we are showing our support for Oakland public school teachers and Oakland classrooms on our social media channels. So, check us out on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to see the beautiful stories from Oakland teachers. We’re using the hashtag #CelebrateOaklandTeachers. You can hear directly from the teachers we supported in our community about the projects they were able to complete with the donation.

We hope you’ll join us in amplifying these stories and resharing them to draw attention to the work teachers do every day. And if you feel so inclined, please consider doing something special for a teacher this week. Maybe it’s buying lunch for your child’s teacher or sending a thoughtful note. Or maybe you can go on DonorsChoose.org and select a project to fund for a teacher in your own community.

Please also share your story about why you appreciate teachers. Feel free to tag us in the post @nsvf and use the hashtags #teacherstories and #celebrateteachers.

We all owe so much to teachers. Let’s show them how much we value them.