My students cannot afford to buy books, nor can the school afford to equip the school library or my classroom library with up-to-date books and materials. I teach a science-based English class that is woefully short of engaging and interesting reading material to cover the breadth of topics I teach.
My students live in a highly impoverished and rural area on a reservation in Washington State.
Over 90% of them live well below the poverty line and struggle to own proper clothes, food, and school materials -- owning books, technology, or venturing outside our rural valley is nothing something many of them are fortunate to be able to do. Funding for our school is minimal and every year we're asked to do more with less. The local bookstore closed this year, making it difficult for students to find new books, forcing them to rely on the school and libraries for all their reading needs and we aren't equipped to meet that need. Thanks to micro-grants provided by DonorsChoose and other organizations, I've been able to provide new reading materials for my students and replace old technology, but the need is greater than I've been able to provide for and my students need additional assistance from donors who are looking to help improve the education of some impoverished and deserving kids.
My Project
This book order will continue my goal of providing my students with an excellent and diverse education by providing them with a exciting and engaging book that aligns with a major project I teach every year -- understanding pandemics and their impact on human society. While earlier donations have helped build up a variety of books for my students explore, getting a class set of "Fever 1793" will be a valuable asset, helping me teach students the science content that aligns with our environmentalism project while also giving me a core text to use for comprehension development before students start exploring the more challenging texts later in the year. This book will help anchor the content for this project, bridging a gap between the higher level exploratory texts I've already purchased and the current reading levels of my students. With this book, I can better meet the developmental needs of my students while still engaging them in a great novel surrounding serious issues.
My students have struggled with reading for most of their lives.
Differentiated texts has helped improve their motivation, but I've still struggled to find solid anchor texts for every one of our projects. "Fever 1793" fills one of those needs and with it my students will have a core text we can all explore, leading is into a fascinating project on pandemics and their impact on societies.
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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 Mr. Olden and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.