A teacher's goal is to prepare young minds for greatness, but far too often teachers are limited in the resources they have at hand to open students' minds. The hope is that $4.1 million will change that. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving that much in matching donations to the teacher support site DonorsChoose.org for classroom projects that help get students ready for college. DonorsChoose.org works by allowing individual teachers to describe projects they want to provide for their classroom and ask for donations. The users of the site decide what to fund. Projects designed to promote college readiness can have up to half their funding provided for by the Gates Foundation. "My goal is to create opportunities for my students to learn in innovative, inspiring ways," said Elizabeth Smith, a teacher who has used the service. "This has made all the difference in what our students believe they can achieve." Since its founding in 2000, DonorsChoose.org has been used by 88,000 public and charter school teachers to secure $30.3 million in funding for projects and resources their students need. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that there will be almost 4.5 million pre-college teaching jobs by 2016.  |