My awesome project is a request to help me fund colorful Mexican folklorico skirts that I can use to teach free folklorico dance classes for students at the elementary school where I work in after school enrichment classes!

I am a general education middle school teacher at Christopher Elementary, a public K-8 school in San Jose, CA. I have been teaching for 12 years. This is my 2nd year at this Title 1 school, which means most of my students receive free or reduced school breakfast/lunch and we receive more state funding based on our English Language learner population. Our primary ethnic population at the school is Latino, and I have been sharing my knowledge of Mexican folklorico dance with my students through the means of dance. I dance and teach children in a professional San Jose dance company, Grupo Folkorico Los Laureles, outside of public school. My school principal has encouraged me to bring folklorico dance enrichment classes to our school in the form of free, after school enrichment classes. I taught a class last year, and will be starting another class this year in March. My hope is to have folklorico skirts this year that they can use to dance and perform with in our May cultural dance exposition.
I am a professional dance teacher and have been dancing folklorico or years, but I do not have the resources (skirts) to allow me to teach the Mexican dance regions at my elementary school. At the last school I worked at, I successfully got a friend to sew 20 folklorico skirts that the PTA funded. I used the skirts biweekly for multiple years, and put on performances for the school. At my current school, we do not have an involved parent group and we have no financial assistance other than our own fundraising. I am not able to fundraise for this project at school because I spend the entire year fundraising at least $20,000 for our students to attend Outdoor Science School.