Laughter is something that is hard to come by for newly resettled refugees. Everything they do is hard: language, school, and sometimes just even getting up in the morning.
The young adults who make it to my room begin with varying degrees of education, ranging from some just months away from graduating in their home countries to others who have had little to no schooling.
But they have all left everything they knew before very recently, including their homes, their friends and their security. Many did not do so by choice. But they are here, and we need to meet them where they are.
In my classroom, students focus on learning English well enough that they can understand commands and have a working knowledge of basic vocabulary. Once they have that, they are moved into higher classes to begin working their way toward graduation. This can take just a week or two, or it could last as long as one school year, depending on how much education they had before they came. Students start from a very vulnerable place, but my intention is to begin Empowering Students Through Art, to help them find their inner strength through movement and meaning.
My Project
In this project, local artists who specialize in drama, movement, dance and music will help my students explore language and play, something many students had little chance to do in refugee camps. Through these visits, artists will provide opportunities to reinforce learning through kinesthetic approaches. Each week, we will play theater games with target vocabulary, making abstract language experiences concrete, reinforcing topics that have been introduced and opening the door to new themes.
I plan to maintain a particular focus on community building, a much-needed effort in a place where students tend to stick with others who speak their native languages.
These students who come in late middle school or in high school are disenfranchised in the school community. Through changing the typical classroom experience, I hope to engender a new community that crosses racial and ethnic boundaries. This project has once before shown fruitful results, and I hope to recreate it with the next cohort. In addition, I hope to use my classroom as a lab to help future artists in residence experience working with low-proficiency students, to hone their craft in order to reach this particular population and extending benefits to the wider community.
Stacy Raphael
(Stacy will arrange for artists (including herself) to come into my classroom weekly to help teach emergent English Learners. The artists will facilitate movement and other art activities to help students review vocabulary and teach them new concepts in a way that lowers anxiety. The classroom will be used as a lab to help newer artists gain proficiency in teaching low level English Learners. In Empowering Students Through Art, we will work toward building fluency and self-advocacy.)
$4,150.00
Visitor cost
$4,150.00
Vendor shipping charges
FREE
Sales tax
$0.00
3rd party payment processing fee
$62.25
Fulfillment labor & materials
$30.00
Total project cost
$4,242.25
Suggested donation to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms
$748.63
Total project goal
$4,990.88
Our team works hard to negotiate the best pricing and selections available.
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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. EVANS and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
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