My students are in tenth and eleventh grades, and have a passion for the arts. Our public charter school gives students the opportunity to spend half of their day in one of the following majors: Theatre, Dance, Visual Arts, Literary Arts, Figure Skating, Instrumental Music, and Vocal. The other half of their day is in academic classes, including my English class.
We are a public charter school, and auditions to our school are academically blind - students are accepted solely based on artistic audition, and as such, we have students of all academic levels, just like a traditional public school.
Our students are passionate about their arts and this passion transfers to their academic classes. We are ranked as the #1 best high school for the Arts in the state of Pennsylvania (niche.com), and are ranked as the top performer in our region on the state English assessment and have received the designations as a Title I Reward School: High Achievement two years in a row.
My Project
In my English class, students show great interest in reading when I can provide high-interest books; however, without a school library, this has been a project of the classroom teachers. (Project photo is of our current "library.") While we attempt to find books as best we can for our students, cost is a limiting factor - as a public charter school, we receive a fraction of the funding that a traditional public school receives and often have to rely on support from outside organizations and funding.
Many of my stronger readers will obtain books that interest them on their own, however, most of my struggling readers don’t even know where to begin.
Having these books readily available for the students would allow them to fully embrace our independent reading initiative that has been limited due to a lack of books.
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