Hamilton! Students Create History Performances and See History Performed!
Help me give my students the opportunity of a lifetime seeing "Hamilton," which places the immigrant experience at the center of the story of early US history, and the founding of the nation. Many will struggle to pay.
Our students at HHS in St. Paul Minnesota are an incredible range of locals and migrants, hailing from South East Asia, Eastern and Western Africa, Central America, Native American tribes from around the state, and working-class families who have lived on St. Paul's East Side for generations. We are a Title I school, and Minnesota's largest urban high school, serving its largest population of second-language English Speakers, while also hosting the oldest International Baccalaureate Program in the Twin Cities, and it's longest-running American Indian Studies program.
HHS students are recognized for their generosity, volunteerism, and incredible capacity to work together, drawing on their many different perspectives and backgrounds, while most have jobs to support their families by providing an additional income.
Serving the students of HHS makes me a better teacher because I have to design and teach lessons that are relevant to these students and their experiences. Every year, working with one another and learning from one another makes us better neighbors and citizens, both locally and globally.
My Project
Our students at HHS are primarily immigrants themselves, or the children of immigrants from around the world. Last year I collaborated with our choir director and we applied to win this extraordinary chance to see "Hamilton!," and received news at the end of the school year that we'd won 200 tickets for our students.
In order to use these tickets, every individual student must learn about Hamilton the musical, Hamilton the figure, and create and perform an individual project highlighting their own chosen area of historical interest within US history.
This will be the top goal of our first two weeks of school this year, so that we can see this extraordinary show, talk with the performers post-performance, and see several of our very own students perform on stage at the Orpheum Theater if their projects are selected for a special performance that day. This kind of learning is lifelong, personal, and inspiring. An opportunity like this one could lead students into the arts, public service, law, history, teaching, or political leadership. We need your help to make this possible!
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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. Keenan and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
