Many teachers in California are faced with the dilemma of securing needed materials and knowing how to use them. KidMAX (www.calmax.org) is one resource to help teachers fill this need and Resource Area For Teachers (RAFT) of San Jose is another. By collecting materials that would otherwise end up in the landfill, using volunteers to sort items, and cost-effectively getting them into the hands of teachers, RAFT is providing a valuable community service. By instructing teachers in their use and providing opportunities to share ideas, the RAFT organization recognizes the value of teachers’ work and that the skill and enthusiasm of the teacher is vital to the educational process.

Children need to become life-long learners. They need to embrace challenges with competence and confidence and become fully engaged in life. Teachers are vital to this endeavor. The mission of RAFT is to support excellence in teaching Pre-K–12, with an emphasis on math, science, technology, and art. RAFT forges a vital connection between business and educators, providing reusable materials to help teachers create innovative, interactive learning experiences for students.

Throughout its brief existence, RAFT has grown at an astounding pace. In the seven years since its founding, RAFT has grown into a vigorous agency serving 700,000 children through 5,500 members. Most of these are K–12 educators and youth development leaders.

Members can choose from thousands of different and often unusual materials gathered from the business surplus stream to aid them in developing interactive and memorable educational activities. In addition, they can participate in formal training by attending hands-on workshops. Teachers learn hands-on, interactive ways to more effectively teach science, math, technology, and art. Through interactive displays and seminars, RAFT transforms the ways teachers view materials. In turn, these teachers create learning environments that transform the way students view learning. Members begin to see cardboard tubes and broken balloons as spectroscopes and musical instruments. RAFT bursts with the creative energies of volunteers, teachers, and staff as they share practical and exciting ways to use these otherwise discarded materials in the classroom.

How does it work?
RAFT collects a wide range of surplus or discarded materials from local businesses ranging from computers to broken balloons. Nearly 1,300 businesses and other product donors provide items such as office supplies, computer software and hardware, end-runs, promotional items, discontinued products, returns, and manufacturing discards and by-products. Most of the materials would have otherwise been destroyed or dumped, but they are all clean and certified safe for use. In 2002 RAFT provided more than 200,000 cubic feet of reusable materials to its members.

The Integrated Waste Management Act requires all cities to cut their volume of trash by 50 percent. Businesses receive additional incentives to contribute materials to RAFT, which provides them a receipt for tax purposes. While large companies make significant product donations, many mid and small-size businesses also participate. In fact, they appreciate the opportunity to support education in their community. RAFT has trucks available to pick up product donations.

The materials are brought to the warehouse for sorting and preparation for distribution. Five days a week, RAFT volunteers work with staff to sort and stock the arriving materials. Each item is assessed for potential reuse and sorted accordingly. For example, cardboard tubes that are sized correctly for creating pinhole cameras are put aside for that use, while other tubes are used for math games. When small rubber circles ("holes" made by the gasket manufacturing company) arrive, they are bagged and "marketed" as math counters.

Many of the daily volunteers include groups of adults with disabilities who come to the RAFT warehouse to receive job training as part of their participation in one of 10 local agencies. These individuals bag, sort, label, and prepare the items for the teachers under the supervision of their own counselors. RAFT also offers job-training opportunities for other segments of the community.

Members browse through the warehouse, lingering at demonstrations and displays of creative ideas for use of current materials. Teachers are encouraged to participate in the demonstrations, which are often given by enthusiastic and specially trained high school students. Many of the demonstrations are ideas shown in previous workshops.

Members are charged a token amount of money for the items they take. Prices range from $1 for a grocery bag full of art supplies, to $75 for a refurbished Pentium computer system. RAFT computers are refurbished and certified as being in good working order. Teaching kits that have been made up by volunteers provide the needed materials for the ideas included in that day’s demonstrations, and they cost only $1 for a class set. Small office items such as white-out, Post-it notes, staples and staplers, paper clips, etc., are $5 per grocery bag.

When a teacher leaves RAFT, he or she has a car full of materials and a head full of ideas for upcoming lessons. Prices are intentionally kept to a minimum because most of the teachers pay for their RAFT membership, training, and materials from their own personal funds. Routine inquiries show that teachers feel they receive an excellent value for the money spent, and they are very satisfied with the services. In fact, RAFT is referred to as "Teacher Heaven."

RAFT offers hands-on workshops for teachers that focus on curriculum support ideas for math, science, technology, and art. Through these workshops, RAFT gives teachers the tools to implement creative teaching ideas. No other program includes free teaching tools and materials when training teachers. Without materials, project ideas are much less likely to be implemented. With RAFT materials, every student can interact with the materials, rather than passively watching as the teacher stands in front of the class. By closely linking training with curriculum, RAFT is able to help teachers with their immediate needs. Some donations are useful just the way they arrive—gasket holes for math counters (nice quiet ones that are very tactile), magnets for science, shipping trays for preschool sorting, or mylar for learning about reflection and refraction. Other materials are combined to create learning tools: a CD with a balloon attached creates a hovercraft as the escaping pillow of air is trapped between the CD and the tabletop. Mylar, cardboard tubes, and colorful bits and pieces of various materials combine to make kaleidoscopes. A piece of string, two hooks, and weights made of almost any type of item can show the playfulness of a double pendulum as it passes the kinetic energy back and forth from one to the other.

Teachers receive practical, immediately applicable ideas and materials to help make learning memorable and fun. And because scientific and mathematical principles are emphasized, students can learn concepts and have a great time doing so.

RAFT focuses on providing materials—and practical uses of materials—in a respectful, teacher-oriented, manner. Created by teachers, for teachers, RAFT is seen as an unbiased, credible source of information and support. This independent stance also allows RAFT to quickly adapt to market changes and needs, such as modifying instruction topics, seeking specialized products for use, or adding programs.

RAFT owns its facility. The 13-year-old, 34,600-square-foot building is fully paid for as of December 2001, thanks to a successful $5 million capital campaign concluded in October of that year. It is located in a safe, well-lit commercial area just off I-880 and Brokaw Rd. in San Jose. The RAFT facility is across from an elementary school and one block from the Santa Clara County Office of Education. It has three classrooms, with plenty of electricity and running water for a large variety of classes.

RAFT is known as a gutsy startup organization doing creative things to help teachers. RAFT uses what appear to be scraps to teach key scientific and mathematical principles in a fun, hands-on way.