Our school is a tight-knit community that works hard to bring the best education to our students. Our hardest workers are the students themselves. Over 90% of our students live in poverty and have experienced some type of trauma. Despite these obstacles, our school has a high attendance rate and about 80% of our students attend a four year college directly after high school. That's not good enough though! We are working to make that percentage higher since almost all our students express the hope of going to a four year college.
We believe in inclusion in our school.
Although my classroom is a general education classroom, I have a mixture of English Language Learners, students with special needs, and students that would typically be tracked in an honors class. Despite the variety in student levels, the class works hard to grow in their literacy, writing, thinking, and communication skills. In our district we have a couple of public exam schools, all of which denied our students entrance. Despite this, in recent years a few of our students have made it into ivy league schools! Our students are defying the odds of their situation! Please help them continue to do!
My Project
This is my first year at this school. At my old school, I had previous successes with reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" with my 9th/10th grade students. They enjoyed the themes, discussions, and mock trail we had. I have been working on this "To Kill a Mockingbird" unit for a while to make it rigorous and able to relate to students' lives. I'd planned to use it at my new school and the first unit we are doing builds into the theme of the "To Kill a Mockingbird" unit. I felt I was already to use this unit this year, so imagine my surprise when I learned the school didn't have a class set of the book!
I would have scraped this unit if it hadn't been for my previous successes with the book.
I'm hoping that we can still do it and I can gain the students' interest in our unit topic: how society shapes our attitude and actions. We will be looking at both primary sources and current literature, alongside "To Kill a Mockingbird." Students will engage in analyzing the text and how elements of the book parallel their lives and current events.
More than half of 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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