This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
I teach Special Education Behavior Improvement at a Title I school where over 70% of our students are living below the poverty line receiving free or reduced lunch daily. My class has a mixed student list ranging from 2nd grade to 5th grade. Each student has specific behavior improvement needs that are being worked on every day.
My students are bright and eager to learn but need some extra help with their social skills in order to be able to learn with their classmates successfully.
Our major focuses are social skills and bridging the educational gaps that can happen when a student is having behavior problems in the classroom. I believe I teach a special group of people that grow and get more skilled all the time.
My Project
My students are learning about their emotions and how their emotions affect their education. These books and journals will give them age-appropriate examples of children who are experiencing some of the same issues and coming out on the other side. We will work using the journals to help my students who are new to my class and not comfortable sharing out into the group. It takes a lot of trust for students to want to share. Once we have the journals, students who were not sharing comfortably or refusing to participate due to their being uncomfortable will have a chance to express themselves freely.
Tying social-emotional learning into the core classrooms is essential to the students taking our social skills lessons and applying them in the classroom producing the student's success.
Reading and journaling during our daily morning meeting time is the best way that I have found to reach my students academically and while they develop socially. Students are focused on the academic day ahead and they are warmed up for their first academic assignment. Both the core teachers and the students win when reading and writing are apart of the students' morning.
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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. Freeman and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
