Maitreya School of Universal Education, a K-9th school in Bodhgaya, India is in need of funds to help support curriculum development in the K-4.

Specifically, I would purchase books and support materials for English, Math, Science and Hindi. Last year we rewrote our school's classroom units for English, Math, Hindi and Science for Grades 1-3. Next school year, starting in April, we'll add Grade 4.

MATH

With donation funds, we would purchase literature books that integrate with math and math manipulatives for teaching -- such as counters, base ten blocks, ten frames, tiles, scales, student clocks, etc.

ENGLISH AND HINDI

We'll continue to purchase English and Hindi literature that supports our curriculum units. Additionally, we'll purchase English and Hindi learning manipulatives, materials to make student and classroom books and materials that help us instruct classroom teachers.

OTHER PURCHASES

Other purchases would include library books, processing materials, and library benches. For the library collection, we would like to increase the number of books that support Social Emotional Learning, SEL, and books that foster a good heart, science, and math.

After all of this, if we have enough funds, we hope to purchase one laptop for the media room's projector and a classroom set of headphones.

RESTRUCTURING LEARNING

The children from Maitreya School are students of trauma. Socially and economically, our families come from the lowest castes of Bodhgaya, India, in one of the economically lowest States in India--Bihar. Nearly all the students come from difficult home lives. Because of this, we started training the teachers to understand our students' basic needs and how to support them. This past year we restructured Grades 1-3 from classrooms where teachers only taught single subjects and then moved on to the next class (similar to middle school in the states, only this is primary), to classrooms with a single teacher instructing students across multiple subjects. This is taking a lot of teacher training and has been a year long project and is still in progress.

LAST YEAR'S DONATIONS

Because of generous donations from people in the United States, India, Thailand, and Burma, we increased the library collection by 700 books -- most of these in Hindi -- and added 3 new bookcases. Your donations supported math learning in Grades 1-3, photo copy paper and other materials for book making, laminating, student whiteboards (2 classroom sets and markers), professional development books, and library processing and organizing materials.

Maitreya School is located in the Bihar State, one of the poorest in India and the 270 students who attend Maitreya are selected from India's lowest castes. I first became interested in this school when I visited the area 17 years ago.

I've been an educator since 1998 and have taught internationally in Burma and then later in the US with at-risk elementary students. I've been both a classroom teacher and PreK-12 Teacher Librarian. Before this, I worked as a library assistant with at-risk teens and before this as a Forest Biologist.

It's pretty amazing how much positive change comes from one small act. Amazing. If you've read this far, thank you for reading this.

Any donation amount is appreciated. Thank you also for sharing this with those you know -- so that those who would like to give have an opportunity.

Much gratitude,

Duffer