My students need these beautiful novels, all addressing issues of migration, to read in literature circles: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, Exit West, American Street, Refugee, The Best We Could Do.
$684 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
Our tenth grade cohort of 42 is an eager group of brilliant, striving young people of Oakland. All but two of our students have families who immigrated here; 80 percent receive free or reduced price lunch, 90 percent of our students will be first generation college students, and all but three of our students speak English as a second language.
Our students' families hail from all over the country and the world: the American South, Yemen, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Vietnam, Sudan, Scotland, the DR, Armenia, Bosnia and Laos.
They and their families have stories to tell about their journeys to Oakland, and we want to help facilitate them telling them. Our students are actively engaged with the world, and are at a perfect age to both build strong critical thinking skills, and to develop a love of reading, writing, and viewing the world as their text.
My Project
This fall, our 42 10th grade humanities students will be writing oral histories of their families. We will start our 10th grade world history curriculum by personalizing the flow of migrants due to geopolitical forces. Students will interview their families, compile their stories and, with the help of a partner organization, will publish their published pieces at the end of the study.
Reading fiction about different people who have migrated to the US from different places, and for different reasons, will allow students both "windows" into other migrants' experiences and "mirrors" into their own families' experiences.
In student-led literature circles, students will read at least two of these novels in groups of four while in the process of learning to interview family, interviewing family, and editing their works for publication.
It is my experience that purposefully reading rich and nuanced literature improves students' writing. These five books are astounding both in their content and in their writing. They will provide excellent anchor texts for our students' dive into writing their own stories.
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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. Carey and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
