I work at a title I school that is 100% free lunch and breakfast. We are on the North side of Stockton, and have a high poverty. Most of our students do not have access to the internet at home and a portion of our students are foster care and homeless. Other students live in a one parent home where that parent works multiple jobs and is not around to help the student with work or encourage reading outside of the classroom. We have very little family involvement with our school because of the area and the dynamic of their home life situations.
Each and every one of my students are amazing in their own way but we do have challenges behaviorally and academically.
Working with my student and helping them each day make small gains in their academic achievement and/or behavior is amazing to see—it makes the challenges of working with this group worth every minute.
My Project
We struggle as a site with low readers. 80% of my students are reading below their grade level and over half of that percent is more than 3 grade levels below leaving only 20% that are at or 1-2 grade levels above.
My kids love to read, but the selections in our curriculum have little to nothing to appeal to their interest or their culture.
If I want to produce better readers, which will in turn, produce better writers, I have to give them reading material that has meaning to them, that resonates themes which occur in their own daily life because if a student can’t see their self in the text, they have no buy in to read it.
My school is trying to provide a print rich environment but as we are in a low income population their is not funds to provide a whole library for every class. We are lucky to have a great school library and a county library student may attend. By having a full library in my classroom I will be able to provide time and resources to improve student reading.
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. Phillips and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
