Charles Best & Donors Choose

“CBS This Morning,” with Charlie Rose, Norah O’Donnell, and Gayle King is my favorite news show. I enjoy the television program and tape the entire two-hour broadcast. This way if interrupted by brushing my teeth or putting in a wash, I can fast forward during lunch and view what I have missed. The show’s tag line “Real News” is evident in many segments and laughter is kept to a minimal. I love, love. Love the “90 Second Eye Opener,” that captures the day’s top stories and more importantly, special reports inform me about things I do not know about, like Donors Choose.

Donors Choose is an online charity that collects and distributes donations to public school teachers across America, so teachers do not have to take money out of their own pockets for projects.

“Teachers ask, you choose,” is their mantra.

The program was started in 2000, by Charles Best, a history teacher at a Bronx high school. He and his colleagues were spending their own money on school supplies. Best built a website for teachers to post classroom project requests and people to make donations. His peers posted 10 projects, but Charles did not know any donors, so he funded those projects, anonymously. The other teachers thought the website worked and rumors spread. Fourteen years later, $292,646,946 dollars have been raised, and 528,697 projects funded. Clearly, teachers make a difference and I recall one that made a difference in my life.

The writer in me would not let the memory rest until I found some words in which they could be expressed.

Not Forgotten  

Miss Brown, my first grade teacher listened to me, “I was absent on Tuesday, and didn’t get a wooden box.” The other students had retrieved their Mother’s Day project from the supply cabinet and sat at their desks arranging paint and paint brushes.

   She smiled and said, “I saved one just for you.”

   I thought her hair yellow, like a Crayola crayon in a package hugged by red and orange. Her blue eyes sparkled and her Pageboy haircut bounced with enthusiasm when she taught. My heart raced as she held my hand, and we walked to the back of the classroom, my attention on her penny loafers. Together we bent to look inside the cabinet, darkness prevented a good view, but as my pupils adjusted, a wooden box appeared.

Miss Brow is not her real name. I cannot remember her name only her kindness.

. . . .just saying