Imagination Is Your Preview Of Life's Coming Attractions II

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

Albert Einstein said it, and it's the philosophy that guides my teaching. I teach junior high (7-8) reading at a Title I K-8 school in an urban area, to a primarily Hispanic population. I am lucky to be partnered with a wonderful writing teacher, so I can focus on my job entirely-- getting my students excited about reading, finding stories everywhere, making connections to books with their lives and the world.

I've heard tell that reading teachers past at our junior high have focused on quantity over quality, and have not deviated from a strict lesson diet of silent reading and writing summaries. I am turning that on its head. Nothing should get us talking more than what we're reading! Our K-6 focused library is meagerly equipped with true young adult books - books a bit darker and edgier, or out there than children's fiction, things that will hook them and remind them of their newly complicated lives where things aren't so black and white. I have started a classroom library to introduce them to some of these more appealing books. I currently have three narrow shelves of my bookcase full of books. Help me fill it! These books are flying off the shelves! I have a card file full of books that are secreted away in backpacks, lockers, on the assuredly messy floors of my students' rooms. The other teachers have commented they have never seen our kids so excited about reading. But there are still some who are resisting this wave of book geekdom and geek pride that is sweeping our junior high!

Therefore, in this proposal I have focused on the weaknesses in my classroom library: books for boys, Hispanic novels, sports book, and real-life problem novels. The solution has already started, with a crazy, excited book-geek teacher and a bunch of donors who helped fund our first shipment of books! What I understand about making kids like to read is that books are vying for attention with things that fat-cat executives have marketed to them, video games and television with the weight of tons of research and money into their demographic. Local libraries can't compete with that, but if there are NEW! bright and shiny books in their face every day in my classroom, we might stand a chance. Some of these titles are: Cut by Patricia McCormick, Code Talker: A Novel About The Navajo Marines of World War Two by Joseph Bruchac, Summer Ball by Mike Lupica, After by Francine Prose, Romiette and Julio by Sharon M. Draper These recommendations come from my own love of young adult literature, my former and current students, as well as hours of research of current young adult titles.

Please let my kids-- most of whom can count on one hand the times they've been in a book store -- know that they deserve new, exciting, appealing young adult books just as much as kids from the burbs whose stockings have Borders gift cards in them every year. I am winning this battle, I'm calling you in for back up!