Our World, Our Library: Multicultural Library for Pre-K!

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

Books are a powerful vehicle for helping children understand themselves, their communities and the world around them. Multicultural literature confirms that we live in a global village and reflects the diversity within our classroom and community while promoting appreciation for diversity.

I teach Pre-Kindergarten in an International Magnet Program in an urban public school serving students of diverse national heritages, languages and cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Our class is almost a mini-United Nations, and I encourage the children to develop personal cultural awareness as well as respect and appreciate the amazing diversity of the world around them. I teach a diverse group of students with various levels and needs and interests. All of my students are curious and enthusiastic. They are filled with questions about themselves and the world around them. My students learn best through exploration and play, and I find that their learning experience is more meaningful and potent when they are having fun.

My Project

Even though our school is an International Magnet Program, we do not have materials other than the Internet to explore the world around us. Stories and books can be a powerful means to help children learn about different cultures through relating to and seeing the perspectives of the characters in the stories. I would like to fill our classroom library with books that represent the diversity of our own classroom and the community that we live in. The collection of books I am requesting will expand my students' imaginations and perspectives out to far-away places and the people who live there. We will use these books in our International Study to bring a more personal story to each part of the world we study to help promote understanding of diversity through seeing the commonalities of humanity. My students also need a color printer and ink to create their own child-authored stories.

My students are the future.

I want to give my students the skills and tools to become engaged, inquisitive lifelong learners who have the both the knowledge and the understanding to be positive leaders in our global world. Through creating a multicultural classroom library, you will help promote the appreciation and understanding of diversity in my classroom which will help my students to be positive leaders in our global world.