Talk Like a Pirate Week: Charity, History and Song
My students need the treasure hunt planning and display kit, wing feathers and treasure beads/sequins, white and black butcher paper, canvas, tempura paint, and wood glue, a DVD version of Pirates of Penzance, and an audio book of Treasure Island for my accommodated readers during the unit before the musical.
This is my first year teaching 7th-9th grade Language Arts at a small charter school, consisting of only 99 students in these grades.
Many of our student population are below poverty level, but they all are devoted to education. Admittance to the school usually takes a year or more on a waiting list before they can attend our publicly funded charter school. When I came on the scene they immediately noticed my love for pirate paraphernalia and pirate-themed literature. The music teacher even suggested a pirate musical for the drama club and choir to perform. This fit in perfectly with a project that would be on its third year, tying in my love for pirates with childhood cancer awareness and support. September 19, 2006 was my first "Talk Like a Pirate Day" and I came dressed in full garb and kept up my pirate vernacular all day. At the same time we were working on cards in our publishing class for children dealing with cancer. Lo and behold, I discovered the following year that Australia had taken up "Talk Like a Pirate Day" and tied it to Childhood Cancer Awareness and support. So in 2007, we once again made cards and used "Talk Like a Pirate Day" school-wide for fundraisers and awareness. Although we'll need to push it back to November 19th this year, we are still planning our "Talk Like a Pirate" week.
However, such an undertaking needs resources that we cannot afford as a school or school community. Literature classes will be studying "Treasure Island" but we need an audiobook version for our remedial readers. We'd like to also have a "Pirates of Penzance" portion of our curriculum but would need a recording of the play. For our musical itself, costumes will need to be created and backdrops made, using various materials we have on hand and those we hope to gain from our donors. Finally, since we'd like to use the performance of the musical as a fundraising activity, we hope the "treasure hunt" kit will help us attract higher audience numbers and therefore raise our donations for a childhood cancer charity.
Although we are committed to this project and will go forward without your donation, your funds would make it possible for students to truly learn and fully participate in this project. In addition, the giving would just continue as we support childhood cancer awareness with our efforts.
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