Help me give my students a classroom library that represents THEM. Three of these books will be selected to be read by the entire middle school student body, and the remainder will become a culturally responsive class library.
$406 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.
All Austin Independent School District schools have been closed since March 13th. Our campus has worked tirelessly to reach out to our students through BLEND (our online class platform), phone calls, Zoom conferences, and email.
In this difficult and traumatic time, we need to prioritize student wellness and social-emotional learning (SEL).
After a tedious six week process, our students now have what they need as far as technology goes. Students are able to access their course materials and continue learning academic content online. As the SEL facilitator for the campus, I want to plan for the fall semester book study that all students will participate in that reflects the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as addressing intersectional Social Justice causes.
My Project
Our amazing students at BMS benefit greatly from our school's emphasis on social-emotional learning (SEL). With 84.2% of our population classified as economically disadvantaged, our students face enumerable challenges that are addressed through SEL instruction. Additionally, nearly 30% of our students are English language learners and need additional support with reading, writing, and listening comprehension.
We want to combine our mission to strengthen our SEL instruction with our mission to increase literacy for all students.
Literacy is the ability to use language to read and write. While listening and speaking develop naturally, reading and writing must be learned.
Historically, much of our social-emotional instruction has taken place during advisory class, but with a combination of remote learning and synchronous classroom meetings likely taking place this fall, we need to make a plan for how this book study will be formatted. The first step is picking the RIGHT books that address the issues we want to target (conflict resolution, anti-racism, empathy, digital citizenship, mindfulness, emotional self-regulation, communication, tolerance, social justice, gender identity, etc.). We want to synthesize many of these topics into a book study, where students can learn from the characters in the story and discuss these major social justice and social-emotional learning (SEL) topics in the context of a novel.
Once the format/structure of schooling is finalized for the fall, we will make decisions about perhaps purchasing eBooks for the book study if we are going to be mostly remote learning. We would want to have physical copies as a long term goal. With the momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement currently underway, students need avenues to discuss the experiences of BIPOC and process the world around them—even as we learn remotely during a pandemic.
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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. Vaugh and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
