My students excitedly engage in riveting discussions revolving around inspirations sourced in their class novels. We tie Plato into Soto with questions like "What can we learn from literature about sin, knowledge, and the human condition?" We grow together in fun, engaging ways every day.
About 98% of our graduates go to college every year.
We are a low-income school. Nearly everyone qualifies for free/reduced lunch. We have uniquely high populations of foster youth, English language learners, and special education students. We are committed to making sure every student is known well by at least one staff member. We are committed to providing extracurricular activities like coding, surfing, and dance, and spend many off-the-clock hours doing so. We are committed to frequent interventions that keep everyone at their best.
Students regularly express feeling like we, including teachers, students and staff, are family. Past educators and alumni frequently return from life-changes to rejoin our immediate community. I believe this comes from our investment in staying sensitive to each other's needs and coming to work ready to love, respect, and grow as individuals and educators.
Although we do not have much money to work with, we are proud to work well with what we have.
My Project
The unit that includes this novel centers around the question, "What role does/can writing serve in the preservation of history, and how does that preservation impact our lives?" In this unit, I collaborate heavily with their world history teacher to provide aligned lessons that feed off of each other to make history, reading, and writing even more alive and exciting than they could be on their own.
In addition to this novel, we read current event articles, historical documents and short stories from authors such as Sandra Cisneros. The unit includes Socratic seminars and a culminating research essay and project aimed at molding our students into citizens of the world.
Students love this book because it is engaging. For some, it is their first exposure into the genre of the graphic novel, which is up-and-coming in the literary and art worlds alike. It is my belief that this exposure is important in that it will create writers, artists and deep-thinkers galore.
Persepolis is a beloved book at our school.
Currently students must share and read the book only in the classroom. If I could wish for any material thing for our classroom, it would be for enough books for all of my students to have a copy to take home. Currently, we have to use too much valuable class time to read silently, because I cannot give them the books to take home. The pace at which we must move, with only a single class set of books, keeps them from reaching their highest potential.
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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. Alejandre and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.