This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
My Students
I knew that my students would enjoy the first book of Art Spiegelman's "Maus". It's a graphic novel, and they find graphic novels much more fun to read as a class than a regular novel. It's also on World War II, which is a subject they have a lot of interest in but not much knowledge about.
However, I had no idea that this group of seventy sixth graders would be SO motivated to read and to finish the book!
We flew through it in a few weeks, and it was the highlight of their class every time we read.
I work in an urban public middle school with students from a wide range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. About fifteen percent of my students have special educational needs, and I also have a large percentage of students that are learning English as a second language. Many of my students live in households where they play lots of video games, their parents work long hours, or they have younger siblings to take care of. It can be a struggle to get some of them to finish a book.
My Project
With "Maus", though, they were so interested that finishing the first book was not even a struggle. They wanted to constantly reread sections. Many of them went to the library to check out their own copies to have to read at home. I am requesting a class set of the second book of "Maus". They're basically begging me to try to find enough copies of it so that we can read it.
What I love about the "Maus" books is the way they simply and clearly delineate the conflicts within Poland during the second World War, and how humanizing the story is. My students have been able to really experience the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis as well as sympathizing for people who have to make difficult decisions in an unsafe environment.
I want my students to have a broader sense of history and also an idea of their place in it.
Reading about the experiences of people during the Holocaust can give them a window into the worst and the best that humanity is capable of. And, along the way, they'll race through a book that most of them had never heard of before. Nothing brings people together like a shared experience, and I think that that is even truer when the experience revolves around reading.
Nearly all 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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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. Dicharry and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
