He looked back on his best school day memory and shared how he's helping schools in his area.

"Teachers are working so hard, so hard, to educate our youth," Dwight Howard said.

When our public schools are underfunded, teachers and students pay the price. Teachers spend an average of $500 out of pocket each year on projects, supplies, trips and tools because they know students deserve to see adults investing in their educational experiences.

We need to get behind our teachers-in-need, and access the power and potential of online communities (organized via flash funding/crowdsourcing initiatives and otherwise) to get stuff done.

Ms. Napolitano, my daughter's fourth-grade science teacher, could have simply explained "force equals mass times acceleration" on a whiteboard. Instead, she had her students make marshmallow catapults and discover Newton's first law for themselves -- to the profound chagrin of the kids who missed that particular class.

All children, regardless of geography or circumstance, should have equal opportunity to get the best education possible -- and a critical part of that is having the tools and resources that enable learning.