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
Reading should be presented as a gift, not as a chore. My students despise reading, but we also don't allow them to choose what they read, but my school also has so (close to almost nothing) to choose from. Reading a book is discovering the world around you.
My students are African American urban students, but other than this one, very loaded distinction they are like all other teenagers.
They are excited for graduation and prom and are anxious and nervous for what the future beyond high school will bring. Many are waiting for college and scholarship acceptance letters, some are looking to enter the workforce and military. Many of them don't understand why people expect less of poor, black students and are frustrated by the stigmas that lay in their paths, but are blatantly aware of them.
My school is a reformed public school that was taken over by the state 3 years ago due to low test scores. The state has not offered the students much of a better option, as a politicized battle continued to ravage the schools and deplete funding for anything educational. Teachers don't have copy machines or resources like pens, pencils, and textbooks; students do not have access to computers with printers and no one has access to a campus library.
My Project
I recently went to a professional development in which Penny Kittle was the speaker. She said that while she does complete one unit in which the class reads together, she teaches reading skills through Independent Reading units, which means the students pick books that each of them are actually interested in. Kittle mentioned that if you think about it, that is how "readers" actually do it, right? We read what we want to read, and if we don't like the book, we put it down and start another.
My students have incredibly low reading scores. They read incredibly below their grade levels. They have no schema because they barely know anything about the world around them. I would like to promote reading, and not just to raise test scores, but to create lifelong learners.
I know as a teacher that in my classroom if students have a choice of what we are learning, students will be more engaged. I want to take that principal and apply it what students read.
Having books, such as Night and Number the Stars, will allow me to teach my students reading skills.
I have a few class sets of books my students do not want to read and that are way above their reading level. What this means is, the students will not engage in the process of reading, and reading becomes punishment to the student who has trouble reading. So the student who was already a good reader, doesn't get any better, and the struggling reader, doesn't improve and nothing changes. Creating readers improves the education.
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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. Scafone and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.