"Teaching is like putting your hand on someone's heart and leaving it there."
-Hasmig Minassian, Berkeley High School Teacher and Universal 9th Grade Leader
At the center of what we do is inspire and empower teachers. We want teachers to have the ability to affect powerful change for their students and for students to have a lasting memory of the lessons, big and small, from their teachers.
We hope that the pictures from our 2017-18 Annual Report illustrate what happens when teachers ask us to help make their ideas and hopes for their students a reality.
“It is incredible to witness the excitement on book shopping day. The students love that they get to choose the books and that they get to keep them!”
-Joal Arvanigian, District Literacy Coach
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Research shows that summer vacation contributes to the achievement gap in schools. To make reading and learning equitable year-round, we’ve partnered with Friends of the Library, a non-profit supporting Berkeley’s public libraries, to fund the Summer Slide Project. Every year, first and second grade students are identified to pick 10 free books at the beginning of the summer to take home and keep as their own. With the annual Summer Slide Community Partner Grant, we hope to make an impact on 3rd grade reading levels which can positively affect future academic success in all areas for our students!
“I am now empowered to bring my students to the creek with a scientific and environmental focus.”
- Asucena Davila, Thousand Oaks Teacher
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Thousand Oaks Elementary K - 3rd grade teachers received a Strategic Impact Grant to develop a hands-on science curriculum using one of the unique features of their school site: Blackberry Creek. The new curriculum allows students to measure and analyze water pollutants and present their findings to the local community. Teachers can now teach hands-on environmental science on-site and students can discover the real impact, positive and negative, that they can have on their local environment.
“After 14 years of teaching, I was able to teach the Physics class of my dreams!”
-Vicki Augustine, Berkeley High School teacher
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A Strategic Impact Grant helped to create state-of-the-art, technology-rich “labs” for the new Universal 9th grade Physics 1 class. The Physics 1 curriculum was designed to offer students “a “hands on, minds-on” course that emphasizes inquiry and investigation. The Strategic Impact Grant equipped 60 labs, each designed to hook students and to cultivate an enthusiasm for science that will reverberate into subsequent years in their chemistry and biology classes.
ART IN THE SIERRA
Every year, the Berkeley High School Photography class takes a trip to Yosemite National Park to expand their photography skills. Thanks to a generous Schools Fund donor, students get to be inspired by one of the most beautiful places on earth.
BERKELEY HALF MARATHON
The 2017 Berkeley Half Marathon Schools Fund Team had 68 runners who ran an impressive half marathon, 10K, and 5K while raising money for all of Berkeley’s public schools! We are grateful to our incredible runners and to the Berkeley Half Marathon for our 5th year of partnership and perks!
SPRING LUNCHEON
We celebrated our 35th anniversary at our annual Schools Fund Spring Luncheon! This year’s theme was “Rising Voices, Rising Leaders,” celebrating student leaders at Berkeley High School, and honoring King Middle School history teacher, Mikko Jokela, and Longfellow Middle School counselor, Rosina Keren, both of whom instill their students with the belief in their own power to make positive changes, starting within themselves and spreading to their school community and beyond!
