What an amazing week for kindness!
I received another donation to the Tiny Tech Cafe (Thanks, Heather Nunnally!) and set my sights on purchasing the “big ticket” items. Realistically, I almost have enough money to purchase the sofa and table/bar stools (which comes to $320 before taxes) and that is EXCITING! It’s really coming together! We are SO close! 🙂
Of course, my dream includes other items as well… to get enough funding to purchase a bookshelf with current education books available for checkout (any authors willing to offer one of their books?) I’m also hoping to purchase the DoInk green screen app for our 30 iPads so students can learn how to make their own green screen videos independently. (This has to be purchased directly from the Apple Volume Purchasing Plan which is why I asked for funding dollars instead of iTunes gift cards with this project.)
I have BIG DREAMS for the Tiny Tech Cafe, but for now, we will celebrate the small steps forward!
As I was helping out with Open House Thursday night, a friend of mine (who is also a PTA board member) offered to purchase the bookshelf! WHAT?!?! Yes!
Grace Whitlock, who used to teach with me at Rural Point Elementary, said she was hoping to surprise me with the gift, but then worried she wouldn’t get the right one. I gave her a tour of the cafe (what’s been set up so far) and showed her exactly where the bookshelf would go. This weekend she sent me a photo of the bookshelf and let me know that her husband, Jason, was building it for me.
What. A. Blessing!!!
The week was extremely busy as I spent most of my time helping teachers getting things set up in their classrooms or ready to use for Open House. Despite being out of the computer lab most days, I was able to set up the green screen with the Command Hooks (thanks Susan Miller!), hang the Tiny Tech Cafe canvas logo on the front door, and decorate the display board outside the lab.
(For more information on the SAMR model of instruction, click here! I’m not sure who created the Starbucks example of my poster, but the coffee correlations are attributed to Jonathan Brubaker (@mia_sarx).
I also set out my Pay-It-Forward candy dish that was lovingly made by Sarah Armentrout in celebration of my 100th Random Act of Kindness blog post several years ago.
Next week we have team meetings, so I will have limited time in the Tiny Tech Cafe, but I hope to have all “big ticket” items in place by the end of the week! The first day of school, September 6, would have been my mother-in-law’s 69th birthday (she passed away in March), so I will have a little dedication section set up in her memory.
I would love if you would consider donating to this project, or perhaps share this update with your friends. It’s so exciting to see everything starting to come together!
More to come! Thanks to all who have donated thus far! I could have never achieved this dream without your help!