Living Classroom Winter 2020 Newsletter

Dear <<First Name>>,

The start of school and the holiday season breezed past in a whirlwind of new programs, lessons, projects, and new staff. Living Classroom is proud of our mid-year outcomes: 501 classes taught to students in 28 schools and an after-school program. This year, we have tracked over 520 hours of volunteer time, including our parent volunteers, amazing docents, and Board engagement.

What’s New 
Ohlone Garden at Monta Loma School in Mountain View
Through generous grants from the Bill Graham Memorial Foundation, Los Altos Community Foundation, Mountain View Kiwanis, and the Santa Clara Valley Water District, Living Classroom has designed a special garden at Monta Loma Elementary School for students and the community to enjoy. Monta Loma Elementary School is near a major Muwekma Ohlone Tribe (http://muwekma.org) ancestral heritage mortuary mound on Middlefield Road. This garden will showcase the plants that the Ohlone people have used in the past and are still using today. Interpretive signs describing the plants and their uses, as well as the significance of the garden, will be installed in spring 2020.
 

Shout-Outs
Living Classroom could not do our work without support from companies, local foundations, civic groups, and individuals. Special appreciation this quarter to: 

• Farrington Foundation for a grant to create the Rosemary School Native Garden (Campbell School District) planned for completion in early summer 2020

• Leslie Family Foundation for allowing us to provide an additional 99 lessons to Campbell students and for funds for the new Rosemary School Native Garden

• Sand Hill Foundation for providing funds for two organizational, capacity-enhancing projects: 1) to create evaluative tools that will help Living Classroom better assess the impact of Living Classroom programs and 2) to advise and guide us in updating and standardizing Living Classroom’s Operational and Human Resource practices

Upcoming Projects
This spring, E3 Youth Philanthropy, the high school unit of Los Altos Community Foundation, will build two compost bins at Mountain View schools and provide a presentation to students about the importance of composting. 
 

See You There!
Living Classroom will be participating in Board Match Silicon Valley on February 12 at PayPal headquarters at 2211 N. First Street, San Jose. The event is from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m. If you have any employees interested in getting involved in nonprofit service — as a Board member or volunteer — encourage them to register at https://www.eventbrite.com/o/the-board-match.

Volunteers
We welcome groups of employees to work together to get a lot accomplished in little time. We also welcome parents to join us as parent volunteers with our lessons. To find out more about individual or group opportunities, click here: group volunteer.

Join a Tour
Tours of our classroom lessons happen quarterly and when requested. Come see “what we do where we do it”. Next tour dates are Feb 6 in Campbell and Feb 7 in Mountain View or reach out to me for an individual or group tour. I promise you will be impressed with what you see!

Grants
Every Living Classroom lesson is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), making our curriculum correspond well with STEAM, Education and Health and Nutrition requirements. If your company or organization supports nonprofits like Living Classroom through a grant program, please reach out to me. 

What We Do
The Living Classroom mission is to make education come alive and empower the next generation by growing environmental champions, ​inquisitive learners, and healthy eaters. Living Classroom continues to offer a complete curriculum of nearly 60 lessons for Transitional Kindergarten through 8th grade, engaging students in hands-on science lessons. Living Classroom is now offered in 28 schools throughout northern Santa Clara County.

I look forward to our continuing partnership,

Executive Director
margoth@living-classroom.org
​EDUCATE  l PLANT l  CULTIVATE
www.living-classroom.org