Help me give my students exciting and challenging novels, like "The Kid" and "Forest of Hands and Teeth", for them to read both in and out of the classroom.
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
Here in the MS Delta, young people face so many challenges outside of the classroom, like poverty, broken homes, violence, etc. which make completing high school even harder than it is for others. Inside of the classrooms of failing schools with a strong emphasis on state testing, they face even more struggles. One of the biggest is the lack of resources.
Despite all of these seemingly insurmountable odds, these are some of the brightest and most eager students that I have ever met who are truly hungry for knowledge.
Without access to the necessary funds for updated textbooks or novel sets, it is very difficult to provide them with the materials they crave.
These students need novels that they can relate to in order to reignite the passion they had for reading and learning when they were younger because the testing culture and constant test prep has extinguished it. They also need novels that will challenge them and cause them to think critically and form strong opinions about big issues. These students are our future leaders and their high school education needs to prepare them for the world in way that they will be able to make a positive impact.
My Project
One of the biggest challenges of being a high school English teacher is getting students what they want to read. As a teacher, it is my job to show them that literature can serve as the perfect backdrop for deep discussions about issues and ideas that affect them on a daily basis. My job is to prepare them for the real world by helping them to formulate their own opinions and view the world with a discerning eye.
Today, students deal with so many issues outside of the classroom and never have an outlet where they can discuss and work through them in a productive manner, novel studies using books like these provide just that.
The books that I have chosen have characters that are easy to connect with and plots that are engaging while still addressing some big controversial issues. Novels like these are as challenging as they are exciting. They set the stage for incredible Socratic discussions and provide a platform on which students can build skills to help them succeed academically and beyond the classroom.
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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. Parker and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
