My students need a collection of diverse texts to gain exposure to communities, perspectives and ideas that they simply are not exposed to where they live.
$601 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 school does not have the best reputation. When I tell people where I work, I either get a wide-eyed double take that is quickly dialed back with a polite smile and comment about how "challenging" that must be or I will get the standard, "Oh, you are fighting the good fight. Bless you!" comment. I have never known how to react to those kinds of observations. Every school is "challenging," and every teacher is fighting "the good fight".
I want to tell people how my kids are so hungry for knowledge that it makes my job easy or that I have worked in affluent suburbs and much prefer where I am now, but, really, you just have to be in the school to know what that really means.
These kids have not had it easy. They have gone years without a math teacher or a science teacher. They may not know when dinner will be available at home, but this community rallies around this school, and when children come here, it is my fervent wish that they feel supported and valued because they are.
My Project
We were all forced to read books throughout our academic career that we found less than satisfying for one reason or another. For some of us, this was the case so often that we learned to avoid reading altogether. Either we didn't see anything that we could identify with or we couldn't understand the language or the norms of the time period.
The students in my class, I believe, have experienced this in the extreme.
I teach at a historically black school in a community that is on the edge of both the rural and the urban. It is an odd combination, and these kids don't often find themselves within the pages of the books traditionally recommended by most curriculum planners.
I hope to offer them an alternative way of thinking about reading by exposing them to characters, authors and ideas that both challenge and affirm what they know of the world.
I plan to use this project to purchase books that speak to the struggles and concerns of the very unique community of students that I teach who so often do not see themselves reflected in many texts in the traditional canon. The goal of this initiative will be to offer books that both engage and challenge. I want to focus on contemporary works from many different perspectives in a pleasure reading initiative.
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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. Hunter and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
