My students need a classroom library that includes high-interest, YA novels that highlight a diversity of experiences and backgrounds.
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. Ward's classroom raised $339
This project is fully funded
My Students
My high school English students come to class from a variety of experiences, from a variety of home situations. At first glance, our farming community can look close-knit and connected, but I also know that it can also sometimes feel isolating for so many of my students. Students come into my English classes craving connection and compassion.
I want to elevate empathy in my classroom by diversifying my classroom library to include YA literature that exemplifies a wider variety of voices and experiences.
My Project
"Great books help you understand, and they help you feel understood," writes YA author John Green. My students need to see themselves in books they read. They need to see their diversity of experiences echoed in the pages they pick up. They also need to read about lives so very different from their own. And most of all, they need to read! I want to encourage my high school readers to be voracious, life-long readers.
Funding this project will help me build a classroom library of high-interest, Young adult novels that will not only spark my students' interest in reading, it will expand their worldview by including a diversity of characters.
One of the writers we read in class, Daniel Pink, writes, "Empathy is about standing in someone else's shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place." Encouraging my students to read more and to read more diversely will help to elevate empathy in our classroom and beyond.
More than a third of 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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