This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
Each day, students struggle to find books that they can cling to and fall in love with. Do your part to save another class of students from falling subject to "Readicide" - the systematic squelching of the love of reading in students, especially students in low-income schools.
My students are 8th graders preparing to enter the high school realm.
They attend a college-prep academy that strives to put them in the best schools around the country. My students are driven, thoughtful, and talented, and they need the resources to push them to be competitive academically.
One of the greatest challenges my students face is that the incredible pressure of No Child Left Behind placed on low-performing schools is creating incredible resistance to reading in the students who need to be reading the most. This resistance is born from the "Readicide" that is occurring in classrooms across our city in schools with the highest need. In order to pass a standardized test, students are given skill-and- drill classes day in and day out and before entering my classroom the majority of them closed the year never even reading a novel in their English class.
My Project
With additional novels and resources, my students will be able to increase their reading skills through accessing these texts. More resources will aid students in their independent reading plans, and give them more options and variety.
The Alliance for Excellent Education points to over 8.5 million - roughly 1 in 4 - secondary students who are able to read and comprehend that material in their own textbooks, leaving 3 in 4 students grade-levels behind. Of the nearly 24 million students who struggle to read their textbooks, nearly 3,000 struggling readers will drop out of school every single day. This will not be the story of my students. As a lover of language and a firm believer in the power of literacy as the most powerful equalizer in our democracy, I cannot allow this to happen to the students I love and am accountable to.
When speaking to the University of Michigan's School of Education, Arne Duncan observed, "Today, you might be able to sit at the front of the bus, but if you can't read, you're not free," which brings me to the warm community of support at Donors Choose.
I am working to build a library of high-interest novels to get my students reading something they enjoy every single day. My students will leave my classroom with a love of reading sparked and rooted within them.
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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 Mr. Knight-Justice and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.