Introducing the Teacher Classroom Registry!

Building a one-stop place for educators to add their wish lists.

https://classroomregistry.info

We have been looking for ways to make positive impacts within our local school district that could be done using our technical skillsets, including doing them at very low cost. Since May 2023, we have been writing on school topics, attending local meetings, and begun to support some local campaigns. Eventually we will begin more volunteer efforts, such as in district committees. But to get started there were areas that we saw could use help. To date, here are the projects we’ve been working on:

• Created and begun writing on school district topics in this blog.

• Created the Build Your Campaign.org site and began reaching out to friendly contacts. Haven’t decided how I want this to work yet.

• Built and assisted with launch of website for a pro public education candidate running for the Texas House.

• Built demo websites for multiple public education advocate groups, pending their decision on whether to continue. We’ve actually offered to fund a few of these sites for the first year.

• Assisting large Texas public education organization with potential new site build and modernizing their processes.

Now we are excited to launch the Teacher Classroom Registry!

What is it?

It’s a simple website where you can search for educator wish lists. Although the primary mission is to support teachers, it includes options for special education groups, fine arts, librarians, and more. If none of the categories meet the need there is an ‘Other’ option available.

The important factor to note is that the list will only show verified school district emails (e.g., @conroeisd.net), which is done using logic built into the app. The technology itself is straightforward, using Google’s platform to collect, store, and display simple data. It didn’t take very long to setup.

Before we began this, we had looked around at current websites that help raise money for classrooms, but they all have a need to make some form of profit to support their site or service. We built this app for less than $5 (unless you include our time), although the purpose of the app is guiding people to where they can go donate, rather than being the donation platform itself.

Why?

This idea started over a year ago where we were thinking about launching a general teacher fund, where we could go and buy X number of dollars from as many teacher’s Amazon Wish Lists and Donors Choose as we could. Imagine if someone wanted to match up to $500 in donations for wish lists, and once collected they can just randomly go through the list and buy stuff.

The first question in my mind was “Where do we find everyone’s wish lists?” This is where it began.

As a parent, your kid’s teacher or the ‘room mom’ may send an email with links to the wish list for something like a room transformation, birthdays, holidays, etc. After that the list gets lost in email until it’s time for them to ask for donations again. It can be quite exhausting for teachers to frequently self-promote for basic things like chairs or colored pencils.

The idea of teachers having to crowdsource their supplies is depressing as it is, but if we can make it easier for people to find their lists, maybe we could help wipe out those lists every year.

What’s the Plan?

To start, we are limiting this to Conroe ISD, but there is no reason why it could not include other school districts. There is a filter within the app that makes it easy to sort by whichever district, campus, grade, and other info to find what you need.

The app could honestly be replicated by anyone, as the concept is not complicated. The difference is some folks might look for ways to monetize it, which I would be firmly against. There is still a lot to discover with the idea.

For now, we are introducing the app and are planning ways to use it in a way that can support more educators every year (or even month). More to come on this.

In the meantime, if you are an educator in Conroe ISD, feel free to add your registry. There are already a few dozen in there.

If you are with a different school district, give us a little time before reaching out as there are several moving parts we’d like to establish before supporting outside Conroe ISD.

Hopefully we’ll send our next update soon!

Visit the app here: https://classroomregistry.info