My students need a class set of A Monster Calls in order to discuss illness, grief, trauma, love, and death.
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. Lomax's classroom raised $492
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.
My Students
Our students and their families are really special! We have a large school, with an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse population, and we work hard to create opportunities for our community to get together to share their unique experiences and engage in and celebrate learning.
Because a majority of the families in our school live in poverty, we try to create innovative learning experiences that build our students' repertoire.
We want to offer students at our Title 1 public school the same sorts of experience that students in rich public schools receive. We are focused on social justice and educational equity.
My Project
An important part of our class is Circle time. We sit in a circle in order to connect our own lives to what is happening in the world or to what we are studying. In the circle, we learn to listen and speak from the heart, and we focus on identifying our feelings (as opposed to our thoughts). We use feeling charts that give names to our feelings. We discuss challenges and successes that we experience as well as those faced by characters in our texts. In the circle, we take on big issues like kindness/bullying, violence/non-violence, racism/inclusion and love/hate. Our goal is to build a strong, loving school community. We want to foster peace with ourselves, each other, and the earth. During the weeks that students are reading this novel about a boy whose mom is dying of cancer, students will have the opportunity to learn about feelings while learning to have courageous conversations in circles.
Many of the students in our classroom are experiencing some form of trauma, and reading literature that centers on adverse childhood experiences offers students an opportunity to express their feelings of grief and loss and work toward resilience and positive health.
According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, between 40% and 60% of students deal with grief and/or trauma during their years in school. This challenging situations, such as poverty, illness, and/or loss of a parent affects students' ability to do well in school, as well as impacts their physical and emotional health. The Johns Hopkins report states that community members can help alleviate childhood trauma. The report states, " Importantly, research shows that
professionals who practice mindfulness skills, like being open,
calm, mentally and emotionally present, flexible, and responsive
during interactions with children...help children." This is the goal.
More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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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. Lomax and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
