This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
My students attend an urban, high-poverty, and racially and ethnically segregated public middle school in Delaware County, just outside of Philadelphia. The books I've selected therefore mirror the experiences of my students, as well as offer them opportunities to learn about life in the wider world. Most of my students have few opportunities to travel outside of their townships, and so we explore the world through books! We read literature, poetry, and news articles as a whole class, but aside from my own contributions, my students have little access to books that capture their imaginations or relate to their own struggles.
My Project
April is state testing month in Pennsylvania, and this means two things: lots of concentration, followed by lots of downtime. At our school, teachers proctor the test for four hours each morning. Some students need silence to concentrate for the entire time, but most will finish and need to remain sitting silently. Our district has even outlawed drawing. So, what does this leave us with? Books, of course!
We already have a solid classroom library; however, we need new graphic and young adult novels to set aside strictly for testing.
Teachers are not allowed to administer the state tests to students they teach, and we therefore serve as proctors for our homerooms. These are not students who I teach on a daily basis, but several of them are avid readers, oftentimes drifting in during their lunch period. By spreading this "book fever" to students from different cross-sections of the school with new copies of Ta-Nehisi Coates's "Black Panther" and "The Wrath and the Dawn" by Renee Ahdieh, all roped off in the corner with a sign reading: "Open during PSSAs!", we hope to continue to build our classroom into an oasis of good books.
Because our library is still only open two days out of the week due to budget cuts, your donations will allow our already-ravenous readers the new titles they crave, while also deepening our arsenal to combat the feigned apathy of our pickiest readers. Again and again, research on the reading habits of adolescents has shown that they require three key ingredients to enter into the "club of readers": a capable curator and guide, and excellent options coupled with the time and space to explore them. Testing will provide us with the time, and we need you to help provide the books!
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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. Forsyth and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
