Scholastic Instructor

Katie Toutges

"    What is the name of your professional association or specialist organization?
Scholastic Instructor

"    How did you find out about it (provide details such as urls)?
I found it while browsing the journals in Scarfe Education library

"    What is the mandate of the association? 
The mandate is to give teachers a resource to find new and creative ideas to implement into the classroom as well as to highlight issues of current importance in education.

"    What kinds of projects is your association currently working on (e.g., publications, mission statements, professional development initiatives, collaborations with museums, conferences, etc)? 
A new feature of Scholastic is their website scholastic.com/elmersgluecrew.
This website is focused on Elmers glue crew recycling program and contains many activities to enforce the the R's, reduce, reuse, recycle.

Another project they have is Scholastic teacher share, teachershare.scholastic.com.
This website is a free online network for teachers to download and post lesson plans.

"    Who are its funders? I was unable to find any information regarding Scholastic Instructor's funders, however, it does fall under the wider umbrella of Scholastic, a major children's book distributor.
 
"    How would you describe the possible link of this group to your teaching?
This group can be linked to my teaching in a variety of ways.  Through the association I can gain many great lesson plan ideas, as well as keep current with what are effective methods to use in the classroom.
 
"    What other organizations does it work with?
One major organization it works with is St. Judes Children's hospital.  Scholastic designs math activity books for St. Jude's math-a-thon fundraising program. 

They also work with Fiskars (scissors), providing lesson plans involving cutting with scissors.

They prepare Earth day lesson plans with Elmers Glue.

Volume 119(5), March/April 2010 of Scholastic Instructor, a journal for K-8 educators, contains an article that discusses combing fundraising with curriculum to raise money for children in need.  In an article entitled, "Kids Give Back With New "Learn-A-Thons": From Spelling Bees to Math Challenges, Kids Raise Funds While Mastering Skills", author Sascha Zuger demonstrates that students are learning new skills while also developing a sense of compassion for their community and for children in need.  Scholastic Instructor partnered with St. Jude's Children's Hospital to create a math fun book featuring characters called numerators who use super powers of division, subtraction, multiplication and addition to battle childhood cancer.  The books also feature personal stories of children battling cancer.  Students collect pledges for each activity completed in the book and are rewarded in the end with a presentation from St. Jude, showing them exactly what their money raised was used for.

An additional pedagogical strategy that I would use to educate students about children in need would use a combination of art and language arts.  I would have the children decorate a small paper lunch bag and then write up a letter of encouragement.  Finally, I would have the children donate some small toys or games to put in the bags.  These bags would then be handed out at a local children's hospital.