Zen Classroom Community

Hi, my name is Gregg Mumma, and I'm the 7th/8th ELA Teacher at Stone Scholastic Academy, a high-performing K-8 magnet school located in Chicago's vibrant and multicultural Little India neighborhood. Stone is a part of the Chicago Public School system. Please read more about our incredible school community here: https://www.stoneacademy.net/

This is my second year at Stone, and I feel I have found my teaching home here! When I started last fall, I inherited a classroom my predecessor had occupied for 22 years, and it showed! The room was full of clutter, thousands of outdated books, and bulky furniture that would've been impossible to move on such short notice. Fortunately, after a summer of hard work by our engineering and janitorial staff, I returned to a fresh canvas of a classroom.

This is where my classroom vision took over, and with my students' help, we are creating a warm, interactive, inclusive, peaceful space conducive to learning and exploring. Students in my 8th grade homeroom have been helping me develop our new classroom space, and everyone has an assigned role. I've already spent about $800 on the space (pictured above), and am hoping to pay for this through donation. The rest of the money will be used for the following:

Language Lab: We have 55 home languages spoken in our building, so I am in the process of building a language lab where students can have writing resources in their home languages. The majority of our students qualify as EL's (English learners), and so the need for resources to support written expression, language acquisition, reading fluency, and vocabulary acquisition is critical. Simply put, we need dictionaries, and lots of them! I've included the most urgent needs below; the grand total for these resources is roughly $250-300.

Dictionary Needs (most urgent):

1. English-Arabic

2. English-Romanian

3. English-Bosnian

4. English-Hindi

5. English-Igbo

6. English-Korean

7. English-Rohingya

8. English-Somali

9. English-Spanish

10. English-Tagalog

11. English-Urdu

12. English-Vietnamese

Below are items my students are requesting as we continue to develop our classroom community:

Multipurpose Classroom/Zen Corner/Game Station:

-picture string lights (student request; interior design team)

-library shelf bookends (student request; classroom librarians)

-book labels/stamps for library maintenance

-artificial plants (real once we've proven we can take ownership of the space)

-yoga pillows (for Zen corner)

-Active chairs (bouncing, spinning stools for our active students)

-art work (hijab girl; never underestimate quote; inspirational feminists poster) *Requested by interior design team

-3D puzzles/models

-tournament chess board (for chess club tourneys)

-magazine subscriptions (Nat'l Geographic, New Yorker, Sports Illustrated Kids, etc.)

So it is with great humility and gratitude, I share our classroom community vision with you! 100% of donations go directly to the classroom! We love our community and hold it in the highest esteem; we hope you can help us realize our dream! Every little bit helps.

With gratitude,

Gregg Mumma

7th/8th Grade ELA Teacher

7th/8th Grade Boys' Basketball Coach

Stone Scholastic Academy