Please Put a Beloved Book into My Students' Book Bags!
Help me give my students a wonderful book that may change their lives.
$1,230 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.
I teach five classes of freshman honors students from the city of Waukegan, Illinois, which is about 42 miles directly north of Chicago. Our student population is about 80 percent Hispanic and 10 percent African-American. It is a designated Title One district, meaning many households fall at or below the poverty level.
My Hispanic students are largely bi-lingual, having emigrated here when they were young or born into families for whom Spanish is their first language.
Their families often hold down two or more jobs just to make ends meet, and their children often bear more responsibilities than the average American teenager. They babysit for younger siblings, make meals, do chores around the house, and get jobs, not just in the summer, but often during the school year when they come of working age. In spite of these additional demands, they remain happy and well-adjusted. While proud of their Hispanic heritage, they also respect American culture and values, and very much consider themselves Americans before anything else. Reading a book by a Latina writer about growing up in America would help them relate both to the world of their ethnicity and that of their new cultural home.
My Project
Currently, our high school's book collection features works by white and African-American authors. I would like my suburban Chicago students who are 80% Hispanic to read and enjoy Sandra Cisneros's wonderful book about growing up young and Hispanic in Chicago, The House on Mango Street.
Our high school has a few volumes on hand, but not enough to serve my entire freshman honors literature classes.
I know my students will love and learn from the book, so would like to provide them with their own copies. They could annotate in them and write about their own personal reflections, which are key to the reading experience.
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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. Cameron and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
