Lowe’s donates $5G to Breed so students can build instructional easels for teachers

LYNN – In a tough economy causing school departments to work with tight budgets, classroom materials are not always readily available. At Breed Middle School, teachers this year say they were lacking instructional easels that help create more space for information and daily agendas, identifying the learning tools as one of their most dire needs.Thanks to a “Toolbox for Education” grant from the Lowe’s Home Improvement Company’s Charitable Foundation, all of the teachers in the school now have instructional easels built by children, teachers and their families.The foundation donated $5,000 to the middle school earlier this year to put toward the construction of easels for each classroom. Breed held the “Easels for Education” program where teachers, students and their families worked together using raw materials to construct each easel.Breed’s technology and engineering teachers Bill Shortleff, Ed Flynn, Dave Angelli and Mike Quinn constructed the kits in the school’s wood manufacturing class, and aided the student groups in putting the kits together.As Breed teacher Sue O’Connor explained, the easels are used in many ways to improve lessons each day, but at a time when most educators are left to purchase their own supplies, spending a few hundred dollars on an easel is a difficult pill to swallow.”Many teachers have requested easels for their classroom use. Although teachers buy many of their own supplies for their classroom, the cost of the easels was out of reach for many ranging from $100-$400 dollars,” she said. “Teachers wanted to use these easels to place the agenda and objectives of their lessons in front of the class. Many rooms have limited blackboard or whiteboard space and the easels were necessary to provide students with important information. It is also a great place to display curriculum materials such as posters, maps, and pictures.”By getting students and their families involved with building the easels, teachers were able to create a sense of community among their students.”The Technology/Engineering Education teachers have spent since October assembling these kits and assisting parents and students in their constructing. The parents and students involved in assembling these kits this past quarter worked together collaboratively with the teachers at Breed to produce a quality product that would be put to great use in the classroom,” O’Connor said. “The Breed community was glad to come together for such a worthy cause and learn some lessons on the wood manufacturing process during their time together.”Launched in partnership with the PTO Today, a leading organization serving parent teacher groups, Toolbox for Education grants of up to $5,000 are available for a wide range of projects at over 1,000 schools nationwide. Parent groups apply by visiting www.toolboxforeducation.com and sharing their stories of need with the company.”The grant we gave in Lynn represents Lowe’s commitment to education,” said Larry D. Stone, chairman of Lowe’s Charitable and Educational Foundation. “By supporting local schools like Breed Middle School, we believe we are not only investing in community projects that are important to our customers and our employees, but we are also helping schools build a stronger foundation for the children who will be tomorrow’s employees, homeowners and community leaders.”