Resource Area for Teaching


Resource Area For Teaching is a nonprofit that is pursuing an alternative approach to education. It has been the subject of studies from the Stanford University School of Business, KPMG and Deloitte. It partners with the San Francisco Exploratorium in developing hands-on demonstrations and activities. While the Exploratorium tends to focus on Science-related activities, RAFT keeps its focus on classroom pursuits of a wider subject area, including Science, Mathematics, Art, and Literature.
RAFT has three principal social and pedagogical themes:
RAFT has retail locations in San Jose, Redwood City and Sacramento, California as well as Denver, Colorado and serves 10,000 teacher members at the four sites.. It also operates a warehouse and volunteer center in Sunnyvale, California. The organization operates on a $4 million annual budget, which is used to operate programs and subsidize material purchases and teacher-training workshops. Funding is provided by a mix of foundation, corporate and personal donations.
In 2012, the organization launched an where teacher classroom kits may be purchased online.
In 2013, a joint venture with Scholastic began distribution of RAFT-designed kits through the retail stores that carry Scholastic products.
The operation includes several divisions:
RAFT was founded in 1994 by Mary F. Simon