My students are incarcerated in a juvenile jail 24 hours a day where they live in tiny cells. Many of my students come from poverty and have experienced trauma or community violence of some kind. Students have struggled with education and often come to the institution having dropped out of school. Up to fifty percent of our population is classified as Special Education and require services for disabilities.
Despite their often challenging circumstances, my students are resilient, brilliant youth who are working hard to transform their lives.
I am lucky enough to be their English teacher and want to give them opportunities to master tools that will help them to empower and rehabilitate themselves.
My Project
A good majority of my students are homeless or foster students who become wards of the court. Many of them leave the institution and go straight to group homes, where they have very little possessions of their own and are controlled by adults they do not have a loving connection with.
While my students are in jail we try to build them up as students so they can go back into the world with a renewed confidence in themselves.
We want to provide new backpacks for them so they start their new academic life with confidence and a fresh start. Thank you, in advance for your help. The smallest things mean the world to our students, who have so little to call their own.
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