Many of us want to “do something” this week. Here are four things that will make you feel good and less powerless, to do good and be good. Maybe help shape a young child’s mind. Much better than arguing or despairing.

The Bishop Maginn Teachers Amazon Wish List went up yesterday with 23 items, there are now five left. They include 8 copies of Hamlet (No Fear Graphic Novels), 9 Surge Protectors, four trash cans,  8 broom and trash can sets,” and 18 copies of Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book Outliers: The Story of Success.

The prices range from $7.25 to $20,97. The books are not textbooks, but idea books that the teachers feel can stimulate or broaden the ideas and outlooks of their students, especially refugee children. (For those who need it, the school’s address is:  Bishop Maginn High School, 75 Park Avenue, Albany, N.Y., 12202, the phone is 518 463-2247

I find the teacher’s choices revealing, they take us inside the classrooms of people who work every day to challenge and inspire their students.

We are learning more all the time about the dire plight of schools in much of America, how few resources they have, how neglected they are, and how exploited many teachers are. It’s a privilege to go the other way.

This is one of the first Teacher Wish Lists I know of, and I’ve searched. It’s exciting for them to be able to choose what they need, and for us to respond in this way. Some people have asked me if I could consider taking this idea and project nation.

In America, the impulse is always to get bigger, my impulse is to stay small.

This scale works because it’s small and manageable. I’m in no danger of burning out and it is working well. No bureaucracy and administration to contend with.

Supporting this school and our other work grounds me, it gives me hope and is an antidote to the powerlessness I sometimes feel when I watch the news.

We asked the teachers to list the things they most wanted and needed to teach their students well this year. They responded and we are answering their call.

The goal is for this to be the first year in many years where the teachers at Bishop Maginn are not spending their own money to buy supplies, something teachers are having to do all over the country.

The students and teachers who report to school this September will find a very different school; a new choir, sports program, music, and art rooms, computer and science labs, laptops and microscopes, even banners and basketballs. Every student who can’t afford a backpack will have one waiting for him or her.

There are school supplies for everyone who needs one, backpacks and notebooks for kids too poor to buy their own. As the cold weather approaches, we’ll make sure the kids who need shoes and gloves have them. Small acts of great kindness.

This Wish List – it will be the last Teacher’s list before school starts in a few weeks – will accomplish this goal. The teachers and students will have what they need to start the school year properly and well. I’m sure they will need more things throughout the year, I hope they will let us help.

If you wish to support this very deserving school, you can donate to them directly (contributions are tax-deductible) : Bishop Maginn, 75 Park Avenue, Albany, N.Y., 12202, or you contribute to me (I take care of the small and personal things) via Paypal, [email protected], or by check, Jon Katz, Refugee/Mansion Fund, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12815. Small donations are just as valued as big ones.