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Stephen Colbert appeared at Manhattan Bridges High School this morning to announce a $4 million grant that will help teachers buy supplies.

The comedian Stephen Colbert took time out from his regular ranting to conduct a polite, earnest interview at a Manhattan high school this morning, in an appearance meant to announce a new “citizen philanthropy” project by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation is giving $4.1 million to a Web site that connects private donors with classroom teachers who need extra supplies, DonorsChoose.org, .

Colbert, who sits on the site’s board, made the announcement in the style of his televised interviews, before an audience of students at Manhattan Bridges High School, but without any of his usual mean comments. (He did draw laughs with an awkward attempt to use Spanish, the native language of many Bridges students, to explain that he was a “perdedor gigante,” or giant loser, when he was in high school.) The panel he interviewed included Vicki Phillips, the head of Gates’ education division; DonorsChoose founder Charles Best; and a Manhattan Bridges English teacher.

The Gates money will be disbursed to teachers who apply for small grants through DonorsChoose’s existing “Double Your Impact” program, which allows foundations and companies to earmark donations for specific kinds of projects. When a DonorsChoose user views projects that fall into that category, they appear as already being 50 percent funded. The Gates Foundation money will go to support as many as 17,000 projects that are identified by DonorsChoose as boosting students’ readiness for college, one of the new goals the foundation adopted after it re-considered its mission last year.

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