Null Curriculum: Let's Go Ahead and Talk About It.
Help me give my students a library that looks like them. I want my children to able to talk about real issues before they have to address them reactively.
Students at my school are bright, inquisitive, compassionate, and creative. These are characteristics that I am actively seeking to nurture. I believe literacy presents opportunities for students to cultivate critical responses with which to sharpen their common sense, curiosity, sense of compassion, and creativity. This year, it is my intention to give them as many opportunities as possible to consider challenging points that continue to burden our greater community. Among these being issues on race, poverty, culture, immigration/refugees, and gender issues.
My Project
I believe having an array of children's books on sensitive topics will allow them to broach issues in ways that feel safe. I believe students should start developing critical thoughts on race, issues with class, gender, culture, immigration, and policy implementation because they are going to be talking about it and dealing with it anyway. I would like to give them the tools to develop these thoughts proactively. Beyond that, I believe literature opens a window to discourse that creates empathy we can't develop without a variety of voices. Children are bombarded with forms of literacy every day. They experience an influx of media that has a host of fake news. It is so important they receive opportunities to create a sense of what is real.
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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. Horne and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.