Help Art Teacher Melanie Attend NY Scholastic Award Ceremony

Hello!!! I’m creating this gofundme to help raise money to be able to travel to NYC to attend an awards ceremony with one of my students. I teach high school art. This year, I had 17 of my students submit work to Scholastic Art Awards. 14 of these students received recognition, helping to earn myself 1 of 6 Outstanding Educator Awards. Of the 14 students, 3 received Gold Keys, which go on to compete nationally. Receiving a Gold Key represents 1% of the 300,000 art entries. Of the Gold Key recipients, only 5% receive National Medals. One of my lovely students not only won a National Medal, but this award was Gold as well, the highest you can achieve.

Her work (shown) is called “This Shouldn’t Be Happening” and is a large ceramic sculpture that brings awareness to the issue that many girls/women face with boys/men and their unwanted advances or actions/words that make women feel unsafe. Female viewers were invited to share a story, if comfortable, and add it to the sculpture to bring awareness to how prevalent this problem is. It was really eye opening and moving to see how many of our students had stories to share. Reading many of these stories made me cry, making this a thoughtful and impactful work of art, certainly deserving of this high honor. The awards ceremony is being held at Carnegie Hall in NYC in June and I’d really love to attend with her and her family, but I’m not gonna lie, this teacher salary has me a little short. The hotel where all the events are held has a discounted rate for attendees, but it’s still $409 a night. I would plan to arrive Tuesday evening and return Thursday morning as all of the events (including an educator breakfast, gallery opening, and awards ceremony) are all day Wednesday. I’m not opposed to taking the train, but the flight is only about $50 more so I’m still working out travel details and childcare for my own daughter at home. Long story, I know. But I have a proposal….donations are certainly welcome and greatly appreciated. But I can offer more! If you donate $75, if you’d like, I can repay you by doing a watercolor painting for you. (That’s what I normally charge for my

paintings). I may not get to them until school gets out, but I can get them done hopefully over the summer. Thanks for considering.

Melanie ❤️