Have you ever read a book that changes the way you understand yourself, your community, and your world? I want to introduce my students to books that expose them to various cultures and that encourage them to grapple with difficult themes.
My school is an urban school, and it is a school of contradictions.
We have a fabulous AP program, but failing Algebra I scores. We send students to some of the best colleges across the nation, yet we have a fairly high drop-out rate. We have students living in some of the most high-priced neighborhoods in the area and many, many others who populate five of the city's government housing projects. They have different abilities, different interests, different ways of speaking.
One thing all these students have in common is that they all WANT to succeed. They all WANT to know. They all WANT to understand.
My Project
Help me reinvent my classroom! I would love to restructure my class so that I can teach something significant and powerful from as many different cultures as possible. These books will help me expand my students' cultural understanding while providing a platform to grapple difficult questions.
The Book Thief is a Common Core exemplar book. It is about the Holocaust and is told from the point of view of Death.
The House on Mango Street is a series of small vignettes told from the point of view of a young Mexican-American girl. The main character struggles with growing up and her own cultural identity.
Life of Pi is about an Indian boy who, after the ship he was on sinks, finds himself on a lifeboat with several zoo animals. This book is rich with "the big questions" of life: Why are we here? Is there a God? How should we live? The book also has great allusions to Indian folklore.
These are all fabulous books that I believe will inspire my students to engage with the world.
Many of my students have little understanding of life outside our city, let alone our country.
I want to make global awareness come alive for them by reading the narratives of people who have the same wants and needs as my students but who are from different backgrounds, different times, different cultures. I would like my students to better understand the world and by doing so, better understand the amazing impacts they can have on it.
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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. Knight and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.