This Brooklyn teacher may have the richest classroom in the entire city school system.
And the global-studies and biology special-needs instructor isn’t dipping into taxpayer coffers to do it.
Emily Chandler, 30, of PS 371, has been soliciting small donations from strangers since 2007 — netting $20,000.
Chandler has had 39 of her pet projects funded by DonorsChoose.org, a fund-raising site dedicated to helping teachers sponsor projects that are outside of the classroom budget.
In her latest project, Chandler demonstrated an algebraic equation by marching her ninth- and 10th-graders over the Brooklyn Bridge this summer to measure its span.
Each of the 12 students was equipped with a pedometer paid for by DonorsChoose.org contributors. The donations covered the total bill of $301.10.
In all cases, DonorsChoose.org uses its own vendors to provide supplies so teachers whose projects get funded never receive any cash in hand.
Most of the students Chandler teaches at the Sunset Park school qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
Before she discovered DonorsChoose.org, she would spend as much as $3,000 each year out of pocket on student supplies and class field trips.
“None of these kids come in with their own supplies. Any books they need, I have to get. Markers, paper. Any field trips they get, I would tend to pay for as well.”
She estimates her personal outlay has now dropped to between $500 and $1,000.
About half of her projects receive matching funds from corporate or foundation partners who work closely with DonorsChoose.org.
Part of the reason Chandler is so successful could be attributed to her clever pitches on the site.
“Voracious Readers Are Starving for the Hunger Games” read the headline for one appeal, in which she asked for $354 for copies of the popular futuristic novel and related material.
It took only seven donors to raise the cash.
“It really heartened me to see reluctant readers actually WANT to get down to reading. The high interest action and adventure of the book will excite my boys, and the strong female lead will draw in my girls, everybody wins,” Chandler wrote in a thank-you letter on June 12.
In a 2010 appeal — headlined “Students Looking for Prints Charming” — Chandler asked for a $519 classroom printer. She got her wish.
For her foray across the Brooklyn Bridge, Chandler asked, “How long is the Brooklyn Bridge?”
She used the pedometers to count her students’ steps and plugged those figures into algebraic equations to determine the span’s length and the velocity they were traveling over it.
“Math isn’t just for the classroom, not just for dry word problems,” Chandler wrote on the project page. “Please give my kids the chance to see how useful math can be in life.”
“By timing our walk, we were able to find out the velocity as well as apply the field trip to physics,” she said later.
Now the seven-year teaching veteran has turned on her colleagues — especially the new teachers — to DonorsChoose.org.
“If a new teacher is able to engage them in something, it makes it so much easier to teach them. Because if they’re not interested, they’re going to act out. They have behavioral issues, so if they don’t like what you’re doing or if they’re uninterested or if it’s completely unacceptable to them, they’ll turn off,” Chandler said.
“I find that if they have some of the resources that can help motivate some of the kids, it’s better for everyone. Better for the kids, better for the teacher, better for everyone.”
Her next plan is to get a projector to hook up to her laptop in the classroom.