DLPs

I learned a new acronym today. Our headmaster emailed me asking if it were true that the ESL classrooms didn't have overhead projectors and not a single DLP. Everyone else probably already knows this, but I had to GI (google it).

The digital light processing projector, of course, projects the computer screen on a large screen in front of the classroom. Most of the regular classroom have these mounted on the ceiling and teachers work with a remote and wireless keyboard to navigate the PowerPoints and Internet sites to enhance their classes. Many of the have smartboards too, but we have whiteboards and bulletin boards. I even scrounged pocket chart and easel at the beginning of the year. Very old school.

The ESL department has been neglected on the technology spending side of things as well as square footage. We have half-classrooms, yet during the Language Arts block, because there are so many ELLs, we have more students than the mainstream teachers. I asked about getting an overhead (a far fall from my Mimio and Smartboard technology in West Springfield), but was told that they really couldn't fit in our rooms. So, I've been improvising in that room, and I reserve the ESL lab regularly and use the Smartboard there and set up my students on programs like Rosetta Stone and sites like brainpop.

Anyway, when our headmaster Barry realized how crazy it was that the ESL teachers didn't have DLPs today, he asked me to find out who needed them and submit a purchase order for them and any other materials we need to do our jobs. This all came as a surprise because enrollment is down, and it's been all about the "austerity budget" since we arrived. I had been imagining how fun and engaging it would be for my 4th and 5th graders to have all the internet has to offer as we work through our thematic units. Teaching would be beyond fun!

So I'm hoping no one wakes me up from this dream, and in a few weeks, we get our DLPs.