My Babies Want to Read Books with Characters Like Them!
My students need culturally relevant texts, such as Dreaming in Cuban, that have characters who mirror themselves.
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. Chung's classroom raised $1,030
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.
My Students
As a teacher in a 6th-12th grade school in the South Bronx, I have the pleasure of teaching my current seniors for the third time. For the very first time, my students will have the opportunity to take a high-level, honors English course as 12th graders that will challenge them to critically think.
As seventh graders, my students were ravenous for books.
Now, as seniors, due to poorly funded classroom libraries, they have forgotten what it's like to love to read. I want to remind my babies (because they will always be my babies) how much they loved to read by providing them with some fantastic books. My students are young women and men who will soon inherit the world. The texts that I have chosen will both inspire and challenge them. They are texts about embarking on great adventures and texts about coming into one's own. They are novels of great sorrow, great joy - they are novels of life. My students deserve books like "Losing My Cool" that move them and remind them how much they love to read.
My Project
My students need a variety of high interest and complex texts that will prepare them adequately for the discussions and thinking that is required in a college classroom. To do this, my students require a series of rigorous texts that challenge their assumptions and push their thinking. In addition to this, my students deserve to have an opportunity to savor language and life through novels that embody what life is like today, not 100 years ago. Currently, my school does not have the funding needed to update classroom texts. The books that we currently have are falling apart and antiquated. As English teachers, we are stuck teaching the same texts over and over again - texts that do not always address the layered world that we live in today. My students deserve to read about characters that seem truly real to them, characters that they see in everyday life, and characters that look like them.
My school is one that strives to provide our students with a college prep education that allows them to compete in both college and career.
Without the proper tools to move them, it is inevitable that they will not be college-ready. This honors English class is an opportunity for our most gifted students to rise as critics and lovers of books that they can actually see themselves in.
Nearly all 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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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. Chung and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
