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
My students are energetic, compassionate, hard-working learners. They show up to school every day ready to get smarter. Our school is in a neighborhood with an extremely high concentration of poverty and food insecurity. Many of my students have faced experiences no child should have to deal with and these kinds of early traumas can really impact their availability for learning. I work hard to create a safe, calm, empowering classroom environment where every student learns at high levels and learns to believe in themselves, self-regulate and advocate for themselves, too. One key to this is my belief in their unlimited potential and our emphasis on cultural identity development and uplift. My students can achieve anything.
My Project
I am requesting four copies of nine AMAZING books that reflect my students' lives, families, cultures and issues that matter to them. My class of growing readers decided to hold our own Culturally Relevant Book Award. We are going to coordinate a contest where every third grader in our school reads all nine of these books and then scores each book on a rubric we are developing and adapting. Developing rubrics and using them to evaluate books is high level thinking that will bring out the best in my students and build their critical thinking. This rubric will reflect principles of culturally relevant teaching--asking kids to think about how much they related to the characters, problems and solutions in the book, whether they saw themselves, their community and culture reflected in the texts. I chose a range of texts that address issues of friendship, racism, civil rights, disability, perseverance, pride, self-esteem and identity in ways that are relatable and engaging. I can't wait for my students to dive into these books--and I can't wait to see which book emerges as the winner.
This kind of thoughtful, exciting engagement with books will deepen my students' relationship to reading.
Students who are strong readers already will be thrilled to put their reading powers and opinions to work. Struggling readers will get to know this set of great books really well and will be involved in judging the books. All of this can transform how they feel about reading. We need multiple copies of the books so groups of kids can read them at a time--then they can discuss and debate the relative merits of each of them.
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 Mrs. Lehman-Harris and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
