One of My Favorite Days of the Year

 
Giving Tuesday

Volume 30

Today marks one of my favorite days of the year, Giving Tuesday. I love it because it provides an opportunity to pause amidst the holiday gift-giving and give to your favorite charity or cause. LCG has always had a passion for improving education, but two years ago, we took it even further and created the LCG Foundation to support U.S. K-12 educators financially. We respect educators above anything else, and it broke our hearts to learn that most grants available to educators were time-consuming, restricted, inequitable, and didn't meet the ever-changing needs of educators.

A teacher we talked to reflected, "It's a shame that teachers have to beg, steal, borrow, and write grants. We all know we should receive funding for everything we do with students."

To date, the LCG Foundation has partnered with corporations to give over $375,000 to K-12 educators, and our Foundation has directly given over $85,000 to educators and education organizations supporting educators. And today, we've announced our continued partnership with Meta to distribute grants to Chicago educators on Giving Tuesday.

Despite this giving, it'll never be enough and always bittersweet. We experienced this firsthand when we helped clear $51,000 of items off educators' lists during Teacher Appreciation Week.

We all know the K-12 system is broken, and I'm not naive enough to believe that a small foundation giving grants to less than 1% of U.S. teachers will transform this system. However, I do hope our small, incremental efforts can inspire others over time. James Clear, in Atomic Habits, said it best, "All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger."

This Giving Tuesday, we urge you to find ways to give to educators. You can support educators by:

Take care,
Elana

 
 
 

​Teacher Appreciation Gift Guide​

Looking for the perfect gift for educators during the holiday season? Our team has spent decades listening to educators, and we’d like to share some of our wisdom with you. Hint: It’s not a mug. ;)

Made by LCG
"educator voices," with some text bubbles
 
 

Some of the top comments:

  • It should also include observing each other.

  • Administrators shouldn't be the only ones giving feedback.

  • The evaluator should stop by the teachers' classrooms more than once.

  • We need to remove student standardized test scores from teacher feedback.

  • Assets-based instead of deficit-based- the same way we should be assessing our learners.

 

[BONUS]

Our team saw this tweet this week and had to investigate some of these tools. Have you tried any?

Some of the tools mentioned:

Don't miss this cool list of Chrome extensions created for educators by an educator.