Call it the gift of hearing.
Rotary Club of Natomas donated $200 to Bannon Creek School today to buy about 50 earbuds, lightweight headphones, for 3rd graders to use in hearing instructions or other sounds from computer learning.
An oversized check was presented to Principal Amreek Singh in a brief presentation attended by a 3rd grade class, several Natomas Unified officials, club President Kerry Volker and two of its members, Chris Zimmerman and Ernie Thompson.
“With Common Core standards, there is a big focus on technology — it’s part of 21st century learning,” Principal Singh said of the gift.
“It’s also a way to show that there are people outside this school who care about us, who care about our students’ learning,” Singh said. “That’s important for kids to know. They love it.”
For many years, Rotary Club of Natomas has donated dictionaries to an NUSD school, but this year it chose earbuds in recognition that schools increasingly are using computers to deliver curriculum.
“We’re a community service organization – and this is community service,” Thompson said of the donation to Bannon Creek, adding that supporting kids and serving schools is “something we believe in.”
Third-graders Stefany and Lela represented their 3rd grade class by standing up at today’s presentation and reading a paragraph, prepared in advance, about how the new earbuds will be used and why Rotary’s gift is appreciated.
“We will get to hear our cool learning videos on ‘Tenmarks,’ which is our cool math program,” Lela read. “We will get to listen to stories being read out loud. We will get to play cool multiplication games to help us learn all of our multiplication facts! Thank you for giving us a tool that will help us to learn better and have fun while doing it!”
Added Stefany: “Thank you so much for these headphones. We need these headphones because we use computers in class a lot. The computers help us learning new things, and the computers make learning WAY more fun! Some of the programs that we use, we have to listen closely to. The headphones will make that so much easier for us to do!”
