Teenagers Need Real Books To Turn From Dropouts to Graduates
My students need real books! Our district has not had a textbook adoption in over ten years - The Bell Jar and Drown speak to my students' lives as immigrants and struggles with mental health challenges.
$492 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.
My students are society's most vulnerable and overlooked children. My school serves the students who would otherwise be dropouts due to poverty, learning disabilities, family dysfunction, substance abuse, pregnancy, gang affiliation, and childhood trauma.
We help them get back on their feet through intensive interventions, building college and career readiness skills, personal and group counseling and referral to community resources.
As a very small school in a high-poverty area literally on the US/Mexico border, we are always struggling to afford the resources we need to make the classroom more engaging for students.
My Project
My students come to my school behind. Our school exists to help potential high school dropouts recover their credits and graduate. In the past ten or so years the curriculum has changed and our district essentially stopped buying English teachers materials to work with. This has been empowering, as I can now focus on texts that are engaging to my students, but also challenging, as I spend a lot of time looking for online articles and texts to read.
Add to this challenge the distraction factor from phones and electronics, and a student population that is already disengaged from school and it becomes increasingly difficult to do deep critical thinking work with my students consistently.
I have discovered that the one thing that gets my students reading, writing, talking and thinking is reading real texts.
My students need relevant texts that will speak to them and help them both gain skills and engage with new ideas. The Bell Jar is a perennial favorite and touches students with mental illness in a profound way. Drown speaks to the immigrant experience, something my students in this border community are living. Both will make my classroom a place for deeper learning.
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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 Mrs. Garrett and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
