Today's world is much more interconnected than when I was in high school, and as a result today's students are competing globally for tomorrow's jobs. As a result, college has become much more vital in ensuring a better future. Today's classroom needs to make college readiness a goal for all students.
I teach in the same rural Wisconsin town that I grew up in, and so in many ways the 9th grade students I teach have the same small town, blue-collar values that I grew up with twenty years ago.
While values and character of the students have not changed, the economic situation has. The area I teach in has become more economically depressed leaving nearly half of the students in my district eligible for free and reduced lunch. Unfortunately, the lack of jobs and money in the area has resulted in higher rates of high school drop outs than the surrounding school districts. In order to make college more of a reality for hard working students that might not have the skills for college, the high school I teach in created an accelerated English and Social Studies program. Despite our school's best effort, many of the ninth grade students I teach fail to see that the skills and content being taught in the accelerated program are laying the foundation to college.
My Project
The donation given will help students to understand the "why" behind why they are being challenged with rigorous content and skill. My hope is that if I can take my students on a tour of a four-year university and see first hand why the skills and grades received in high school are important. I want my students, as ninth graders, to see that college is a realistic possibility and that the students at the university are in a lot of ways no different from them. That college is a realistic goal.
Any donation able to be given will help pay for the transportation costs to visit the college, enabling my students to begin their high school career with the end goal of going to college in mind.
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