Clarke Elementary teacher received donation from SONIC Drive-In for Teacher Appreciation Month

On Teacher Appreciation Day, SONIC matched 50% of each donation made to all teacher requests on DonorsChoose.

Ann Fantz, Clarke Elementary Media Specialist received $746 for the project “Clash of the Chronicles”

To honor the creative efforts teachers have made to maneuver their ever-shifting learning environments and keep students engaged this past year, SONIC® Drive-In donated $1.5 million to teacher requests on national education nonprofit site DonorsChoose on Teacher Appreciation Day, May 4. As part of SONIC’s ongoing Limeades for Learning initiative, the $1.5 million donation helped fund more than 7,000 teacher requests across the country in need of critical resources, including a special teacher in Osceola, Iowa, who received a combined donation of $746.

“It’s an in-house battle of the books. We did it this year K-fifth grade,” said Fantz. “...All the books this year I borrowed from Green Hills AEA... I had a set of books for Kindergarten and first, second and third, and fourth and fifth grade,”

The students were put in teams of four. The books were divided between the team so each person read a certain number and then they will be asked questions when they are done reading. The answer was always the name of the book and the fifth graders earned bonus points by also listing the author name. Fifth graders also helped write some of the questions for the students.

The classes battled and those winners in second-fifth grade then battled against grade levels to have an overall winner.

Kindergarten and first grade students did a “Kahoot”. Each class played the online game answering questions and the winning class in each grade got to choose between a root beer float party or bomb pops.

Her goal for future Clarke’s Clash of the Chronicles is to have a set of books for each grade level. Fantz reads through all the books and writes questions to coincide with each one. That’s where DonorsChoose comes in handy.

DonorsChoose is like crowdfunding specifically for teachers. Any teacher can go on and write about a project that they want funded. While anybody can donate at anytime, Teacher Appreciation Week is the most popular for large companies to seek out projects in need of funding.

“Teachers took this past year head-on, engineering a variety of innovative methods to keep their students learning in both in-person and virtual classrooms,” said Lori Abou Habib, chief marketing officer for SONIC. “We express our gratitude to these teachers, who create inspirational learning environments for students during a challenging time. With SONIC’s $1.5 million donation match, we were able to help teachers access much-need supplies to successfully complete this school year.”

“It really is just an amazing gift,” said Fantz. “To get that much money from one company is just kind and generous. With that I was able to purchase 11 different titles and 10 books each. So 110 books. Although that’s not quite what I need so I’ve written a grant for Wal Mart. I’m hoping they come through with the books that I need.”

Visit LimeadesforLearning.com to learn about future funding opportunities and explore public school teacher requests in the Osceola community in need of support.