NYC Teacher Fundraising To Get Supplies For Her High Poverty School

Commack resident Michelle Fargnoli is looking to purchase an interactive white board for her special education classroom.

A Commack woman, who works as a special education teacher in an impoverished area of South Bronx, is asking her neighbors to help her raise money to add an interactive white board to her classroom for her students.

Michelle Fargnoli, a graduate and resident of Commack, teaches children with multiple and severe disabilities who are growing up in areas of high poverty. She explained that her students lack access to supplies that best meet their educational needs, such as interactive whiteboards.

“My students are amazing. They are high schoolers empowered to do their best, but are limited by their intellectual, or multiple disabilities. My class is enrolled in a NYC Specialized School in a high poverty area of the South Bronx. They face cognitive, physical, and emotional challenges that many of us will never have to encounter, everyday. They are brave, resilient, eager to learn, and come to school with a positive attitude each and every day, Fargnoli wrote in her essay for an online fundraising website,DonorsChoose.org.

To help her students get an interactive whiteboard, she created a project the grassroots fundraising website.

“I continue to do my best as a professional to reach these students on these levels with the tools that have been provided to me, but after watching their gleaming reactions to their seldom experiences with technology, I can only imagine how fast their jet to success would travel with this classroom tool,” she said.

Fargnoli needs $1,565 more to reach her fundraising goal to purchase a Promethean ActivBoard. She said that her students, whose physical disabilities only allow use of their pointer finger to press a picture symbol onto a paper for their work, can now use that same finger to access engaging content, learn cause and effect relationships, and draw geometric representations of objects for this year's math theme.

She added that audio, visual, tactile, and kinesthetic learning styles could all be addressed through use of the board.

Residents can help Fargnoli reach her goal by visitinghttp://www.donorschoose.org/project/engagement-for-all-through-the-power-of/1064622/ and making a donation.