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
My students are full of creative energy and imagination! Our class is abuzz with excited chatter during project work time and silent with steely focus while writing or researching on our Chromebooks. It is my delightful yet daunting mission to harness all that buzzy interest and focus it into innovative ways to express their understanding of social studies and history.
A handful of statistics can't capture the hearts of these kids, but let me share with you a little bit to make their need clearer.
My students are a diverse mix of Latino, Filipino and African American children. Our neighborhood is high poverty so 100% of the students qualify for free lunch. For a few, the school meals are the most reliable source of nutrition they have. Their reading skills range from those working on blending letter sounds to those writing essays on theme in the current novel we are reading. About half of the kids come from homes where English isn't the native language, yet 100% of my students have reclassified as proficient in English, some just within the last school year. A few of them are identified as gifted, but every one of them is uniquely talented.
My Project
My students will travel to Mission San Juan Capistrano and get to experience a bit of history for themselves! They will examine and sketch artifacts, and use their findings to make conclusions about how life changed for the Native Americans after the Spanish established missions here. After our unit of study, students will create two murals--one representing Native American life before the Spanish colonization of California and one showing their lifestyle afterwards to express their thoughts about the effects of Spanish colonization in California. The concept of cultural change and the effects of colonization are Big Ideas in history and sometimes hard to grasp and internalize for young minds. Taking the content out of the pages of textbooks and turning it into an authentic opportunity for my students to create their own understanding through art will truly make a difference in their learning.
The arts are more important than we give them credit for; through art, students learn important life skills and values such as persistence or practice pays off and the pleasure that comes from building something that makes you proud.
They also learn critical intellectual skills such as how to observe, interpret, see different perspectives and analyze. Even though I am aware of the benefits of the arts, with other curriculum demands, my students don't get enough visual arts in their school lives! By giving my students opportunities to use art to make sense of their learning, you will help give them a tool that they will be able to use in the future to empower themselves as learners. Thank you for your help!
Nearly all 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. Anderson and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
