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
In an incarcerated setting, sports mean the world to the students. Athletics give the youth an outlet in a setting that is otherwise quite dismal and depressing. Many of our students use sports as a stress reliever and a way to connect to other youth they might normally be enemies with on the streets. Our juvenile hall is incorporating sports into the daily routine in a pretty major way.
Students in jail are competing in basketball and soccer tournaments against outside nonprofit organizations other community leaders, which helps show our students that people from the outside care about and believe in their capacity to rehabilitate.
DonorsChoose has helped provide so much equipment already, but as our program expands, we need new equipment to keep the program running. Thank you for considering helping me help my students.
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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. Mercurio and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.