My students need 50 copies of Darin Strauss's book, "Half a Life."
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. Gullo's classroom raised $1,159
This project is fully funded
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.
My Students
Do you remember being forced to read book after book in high school that never spoke to you at all? Then you found that one book that felt like a punch a gut, that was touched you so deeply that you cannot forget it?
My 12th Grade English Composition students are survivors.
They are not the super stars of the school, who generally take Advanced Placement. Rather, they are the students who have overcome the odds and made it this far. They are students who do not read for pleasure, nor do they come from homes that would be called a "print-rich-environment." Instead, these are kids who have made it to 12th grade through determination and will.
My class is one of two graduation requirements. It serves as the gateway to exiting school and I take it seriously, making the class as rigorous as I would want for my own children. One difficulty I encounter is a lack of high-quality reading materials. My district has created a "textbook" of articles that range in length from 2-3 pages. This is supposed to be sufficient enough to inspire good writing, but it obviously isn't.
My Project
The book I'd like to have my students read, Half a Life, is a memoir about a young man who kills a classmate in a car accident when he is a senior in college. The book is a stark look at how lives change in a blink of an eye and how a person deals with responsibility for the rest of his life.
This book is also an amazing memoir, an opportunity to look at how writers craft the stories of their own lives. I hope it will serve as an invitation to my students to write about their own experiences.
It's incredibly difficult to teach without access to thought-provoking, well-written books.
If I can continue to challenge and inspire these students, perhaps they will be engaged enough to think of themselves as ready to accept the rigors of post-secondary education.
Nearly all students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Gullo and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
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