Help me give my students novels that represent the diversity that exists in our world. The most expensive books are a LGBTQ fiction and a nonfiction on civil rights. The rest represent even more diversity.
My high school students come from the most diverse backgrounds. More than one student transferred from a gang-ridden city. Another from France. A young man's family came from Puerto Rico. Many never left our local area. Many have never taken a long road trip. Most have never flown. Very few have taken family vacations out of our state.
My students range from high-achieving to barely reading, and all of them come wanting to learn.
Most of my students are involved in not just one sport or extracurricular but many. Very few are involved in none. These teenagers spend hours on school work and representing their school the best way they can.
My Project
For students, literacy is often the word a teacher uses and is associated with "forced" in class readings of novels, short stories, and poems. Often, students are overwhelmed by libraries and too hesitant to ask a librarian, often a stranger, for help. As Scholastic reports, "in one study, classroom libraries increased reading time by 60%." Increasing student reading time connects to increasing vocabulary knowledge and comprehension skills. Also, when students are exposed to literary diversity, they have a chance to learn outside of their own context. My classroom library is in desperate need of an upgrade to become more inclusive as well as represent current high interest nonfiction.
In my effort to create a classroom library focused on diversity in fiction and nonfiction, your donation can supply numerous opportunities for students to identify as well as diversify their literature experience.
I already have novels to represent strong female characters but need male driven plots as well as more diverse cultural representation. I've also included nonfiction that will connect to our curriculum, which will certainly assist students in realizing their own voice as a young adult.
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